then the plain fact is that my Uncle Roland was as
eccentric and contradictory a gentleman--as--as--why, as you and I are,
if we once venture to think for ourselves.

"Well, sir, and what profession are you meant for?" asked my uncle. "Not
the army, I fear?"

"I have never thought of the subject, uncle."

"Thank Heaven," said Captain Roland, "we have never yet had a lawyer in
the family, nor a stockbroker, nor a tradesman--ahem!"

I saw that my great ancestor the printer suddenly rose up in that hem.

"Why, uncle, there are honorable men in all callings."

"Certainly, sir. But in all callings honor is not the first principle of
action."

"But it may be, sir, if a man of honor pursue it! There are some
soldiers who have been great rascals!"

My uncle looked posed, and his black brows met thoughtfully. "You are
right, boy, I dare say," he answered, somewhat mildly. "But do you think
that it ought to give me as much pleasure to look on my old ruined tower
if I knew it had been bought by some herring-dealer, like the first
ancestor of the Poles, as I do now, when I know it was given to a knight
and gentleman (who traced his descent from an Anglo-Dane in the time of
King Alfred) for services done in Aquitaine and Gascony, by Henry the
Plantagenet? And do you mean to tell me that I should have been the same
man if I had not from a boy associated that old tower with all ideas of
what its owners were, and should be, as knights and gentlemen? Sir, you
would have made a different being of me if at the head of my
pedigree you had clapped a herring-dealer,--though, I dare say, the
herring-dealer might have been as good a man as ever the Anglo-Dane was,
God rest him!"

"And for the same reason I suppose, sir, that you think my father never
would have been quite the same being he is if he had not made that
notable discovery touching our descent from the great William Caxton,
the printer."

My uncle bounded as if he had been shot,--bounded so incautiously,
considering the materials of which one leg was composed, that he would
have fallen into a strawberry-bed if I had not caught him by the arm.

"Why, you--you--you young jackanapes!" cried the Captain, shaking me off
as soon as he had regained his equilibrium. "You do not mean to inherit
that infamous crotchet my brother has got into his head? You do not mean
to exchange Sir William de Caxton, who fought and fell at Bosworth,
for the mechanic who sold black-letter pamphl