bag, or a box of tools, and they were
as good as new before you could wink your eye. Indeed, so great was the
desire to keep things up that it was only necessary (so a wag said) to
scratch a match on old Seymour's front door to have its panels repainted
the next morning.

And then its seclusion:--while its neighbors--the Temple mansion among
them--had been placed boldly out to the full building line where they
could see and be seen, the Seymours, with that spirit of aloofness which
had marked the family for generations, had set their dwelling back ten
paces, thrown up a hedge of sweet-smelling box to screen the inmates
from the gaze of passers-by, planted three or four big trees as
protection for the upper windows, and, to insure still greater privacy,
had put up a swinging wooden gate, kept shut by a ball and chain, its
clang announcing the entrance of each and every visitor.

And this same spirit was manifest the moment you stepped into the wide
hall, glanced at the old family portraits marching steadily, one after
another, up the side of the spacious stairs (revarnished every other
year)--entered the great drawing-room hung with yellow satin
and decorated with quaint mirrors, and took a scat in one of the
all-embracing arm-chairs, there to await the arrival of either the
master of the house or his charming daughter.

If it were the master to whom you wished to pay your respects, one
glance at the Honorable Howard Douglass Seymour would have convinced you
that he was precisely the kind of man who should have had charge of
so well-ordered a home: so well brushed was he--so clean-shaven--so
immaculately upholstered--the two points of his collar pinching his
cheeks at the same precise angle; his faultless black stock fitting to
perfection, the lapels of his high-rolled coat matching exactly. And
then the correct parting of the thin gray hair and the two little gray
brush-tails of lovelocks that were combed in front of his ears, there
to become a part of the two little dabs of gray whiskers that stretched
from his temples to his bleached cheekbones. Yes--a most carefully
preserved, prim, and well-ordered person was Kate's father.

As to the great man's career, apart from his service in the legislature,
which won him his title, there was no other act of his life which
marked him apart from his fellows. Suffice it to say that he was born
a gentleman without a penny to his name; that he married Kate's mother
when she was