shed with your rightful
coat-of-arms and with papers clearly tracing your family to the Druids,
the Vestal Virgins, and all the best people in the world. Therefore I
felicitated the Boadicean lady upon the illustrious progenitrix
with whom the Almanach de Gotha had provided her for so small a
consideration, and observed that for myself I supposed I should continue
to rest content with the thought that in our enlightened Republic every
American was himself a sovereign. But that, said the lady, after giving
me another look, is so different from Boadicea! And to this I perfectly
agreed. Later I had the pleasure to hear in a roundabout way that she
had pronounced me one of the most agreeable young men in society, though
sophisticated. I have not cherished this against her; my gift of humor
puzzles many who can see only my refinement and my scrupulous attention
to dress.

Yes, indeed, I counted myself proof against all Boadiceas. But you have
noticed--have you not?--how, whenever a few people gather together and
style themselves something, and choose a president, and eight or nine
vice-presidents, and a secretary and a treasurer, and a committee on
elections, and then let it be known that almost nobody else is qualified
to belong to it, that there springs up immediately in hundreds and
thousands of breasts a fiery craving to get into that body? You may
try this experiment in science, law, medicine, art, letters, society,
farming, I care not what, but you will set the same craving afire in
doctors, academicians, and dog breeders all over the earth. Thus, when
my Aunt--the president, herself, mind you!--said to me one day that
she thought, if I proved my qualifications, my name might be favorably
considered by the Selected Salic Scions--I say no more; I blush, though
you cannot see me; when I am tempted, I seem to be human, after all.

At first, to be sure, I met Aunt Carola's suggestion in the way that I
am too ready to meet many of her remarks; for you must know she once,
with sincere simplicity and good-will, told my Uncle Andrew (her
husband; she is only my Aunt by marriage) that she had married beneath
her; and she seemed unprepared for his reception of this candid
statement: Uncle Andrew was unaffectedly merry over it. Ever since then
all of us wait hopefully every day for what she may do or say next.

She is from old New York, oldest New York; the family manor is still
habitable, near Cold Spring; she was, in her yout