A meaner soul might have turned the peacock prestige to financial account.

"Had I charged a fee for every consultation with anxious mothers on this subject" (that of introducing a young girl into New York society) "I would be a rich man." A Wall Street banker visiting him in his modest home in Twenty-first Street exclaimed against the surroundings, offering to buy a certain stock at the opening of the Board, and send the resulting profits in the afternoon of the same day.

Commodore Vanderbilt, who apparently never forgot that first dinner, once advised: "Mac, sell everything you have and put it in Harlem stock; it is now twenty-four; you will make more money than you know how to take care of." But steadfastly McAllister refused to be tempted.

So long as his cottage was a "cottage of gentility," why try to augment his fortune?
"A gentleman can afford to walk; he cannot afford to have a shabby equipage," he once said.

That distinction which he felt to be his was not to be impaired by his trudging afoot.
It is not in the pictures of his youth, winning his way into society to rule it; but come to ripe years, secure in his position, imparting his creed on points of social usage, with mellow dogmatism laying down the law in all matters of vintages and viands, that he is most impressive.
"My dear sir, I do not argue, I inform." It was that spirit that led to the dictum that made him famous.