er had; and
he was a brother of Agrippina, mother of Nero. This precious pair had a
most noble and generous father, and their gentle mother was a fit mate
for the great Germanicus--these things are here inserted for the
edification of folks who take stock in that pleasant fallacy, the Law of
Heredity, and who gleefully chase the genealogical anise-seed trail.

Caligula happily passed out without an heir, and Claudius, next of kin,
put himself in the way of the Pretorian Guard, and was declared Emperor.

He was then fifty years old, a grass-widower--twice over--and on the
lookout for a wife. He was neither wise nor great, nor was he very bad;
he was kind--after dinner--and generous when rightly approached. Canon
Farrar likened Claudius to King James the First, who gave us our English
Bible. His comparison is worth quoting, not alone for the truth it
contains, but because it is an involuntary paraphrase of the faultless
literary style of the Roman rhetors. Says Canon Farrar: "Both were
learned, and both were eminently unwise. Both were authors, and both
were pedants. Both delegated their highest powers to worthless
favorites, and both enriched these favorites with such foolish
liberality that they remained poor themselves. Both of them, though of
naturally good dispositions, were misled by selfishness into acts of
cruelty; and both of them, though laborious in the discharge of duty,
succeeded only in rendering royalty ridiculous. King James kept Sir
Walter Raleigh, the brightest intellect of his time, in prison; and
Claudius sent Seneca, the greatest man in his kingdom, into exile."

New-made kings sweep clean. The impulses of Claudius were right and
just, a truthful statement I here make in pleasant compliment to a
brother author. The man was absent-minded, had much faith in others, and
moved in the line of least resistance. Like most students and authors,
he was decidedly littery. He secured a divorce from one wife because she
cleaned up his room in his absence so that he could never find
anything; and the other wife got a divorce from him because he refused
to go out evenings and scintillate in society--but this was before he
was made Emperor.

God knows, people had their troubles then as now. To take this man who
loved his slippers and easy-chair, and who was happy with a roll of
papyrus, and plunge him into a seething pot of politics, not to mention
matrimony, was refined cruelty.

The matchmakers were busy, and