unduded him. With eyes so luminous and expressive in a
face so masculine, with shoulders so well carried, a chest so deep, and
legs so perfectly proportioned and so free from any deviation from the
true line of support, Millard had temptations to cultivate natural
gifts.

There was a notion prevalent among Millard's acquaintances that one so
versed in the lore and so deft in the arts of society must belong to a
family of long standing; the opinion was held, indeed, by pretty much
everybody except Millard himself. His acquaintance with people of
distinction, and his ready access to whatever was deemed desirable in
New York, were thought to indicate some hereditary patent to social
privilege. Millard had, indeed, lines of ancestors as long as the
longest, and, so far as they could be traced, his forefathers were
honest and industrious people, mostly farmers. Nor were they without
distinction: one of his grandfathers enjoyed for years the felicity of
writing "J. P." after his name; another is remembered as an elder in the
little Dutch Reformed Church at Hamburg Four Corners. But Charley
Millard did not boast of these lights of his family, who would hardly
have availed him in New York. Nor did he boast of anything, indeed; his
taste was too fastidious for self-assertion of the barefaced sort. But
if people persisted in fitting him out with an imaginary pedigree, just
to please their own sense of congruity, why should he feel obliged to
object to an amusement so harmless?

Charles Millard was the son of a farmer who lived near the village of
Cappadocia in the State of New York. When Charley was but twelve years
old his father sold his farm and then held what was called in the
country a "vendoo," at which he sold "by public outcry" his horses,
cows, plows, and pigs. With his capital thus released he bought a
miscellaneous store in the village, in order that his boys "might have a
better chance in the world." This change was brought about by the
discovery on the part of Charley's father that his brother, a
commission merchant in New York, "made more in a week than a farmer
could make in a year." From this time Charley, when not in school,
busied himself behind the counter, or in sweeping out the store, with no
other feeling than that sweeping store, measuring calico, and drawing
molasses were employments more congenial to his tastes and less hard on
good clothes than hoeing potatoes or picking hops. Two years after his
remo