After Hurricane Ike pulverized the island, the nouveaux pauvres surviving residents of Galveston gathered in the battered shell of the former fellowship hall, and remembered how old Tom Jenkins -- who had always been known as a Silent Sam -- had seen the rising of the Dog Star as a heliacal sign of impending disaster and had run from house to house, knocking on doors and crying out his dire warning, while he averted to a carefully printed list of evacuation recommendations in his hand, but since this behavior was so atypical of Tom, his concerns had been ignored as the ravings of a lunatic.

The Silent Sam adverted that his nouveau pauvre was somehow related to the heliacal rising of the sun.

It would be altogether odious were I to advert even en passant to the heliacal rise and fall of Voluble Victor, that sunny star of hedge fund fame and fortune who has turned into a morose Silent Sam since joining the lowly ranks of the nouveaux pauvres.

“I suppose we will soon all be nouveaux pauvres”, joked Count Pover Teesux to a room full of guests assembled for a lavish supper at his estate, when the news of tax increases on the rich reached him, and they all erupted in laughter and compliments for the host’s genial wit and charm, except for one Silent Sam who adverted calmly after the cackling died down that the crisis was serious and that their fortunes would rise or fall with the country as surely as heliacal stars rise and set with the sun.

Mr. Brown, often referred to as Silent Sam by his colleagues, saw himself turn into a helpless nouveau pauvre when he lost his 300 dollar bet regarding the heliacal rising of the circumpolar stars which had him advert an imprudent assertion—"These stars are not visible in Europe as they always stay above the horizon", whereas these stars are in fact location independent.