"As no lady or gentleman with any claims to polite breeding can possibly sympathize with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first assured of the extreme antiquity of the race it is a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve; and was in the very earliest times closely connected with the agricultural interest. If it should ever be urged by grudging and malicious persons that a Chuzzlewit in any period of the family history displayed an overweening amount of family pride surely the weakness will be considered not only pardonable but laudable when the immense superiority of the house to the rest of mankind in respect of this its ancient origin is taken into account."