their way, but peculiar.
Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's
side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked
about for protection; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately way,
said,--"The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never want while
his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with my plain, but
benignant protectors, in the State of New Hampshire.

During my boyhood, the best-drilled lesson that fell to my keeping was
this:--"Respect yourself. We come of more than ordinary parentage.
Superior blood was probably concerned in getting up the Pettibones. Hold
your head erect, and some day you shall have proof of your high
lineage."

I remember once, on being told that I must not share my juvenile sports
with the butcher's three little beings, I begged to know why not. Aunt
Eunice looked at Patience, and Mary Ann knew what she meant.

"My child," slowly murmured the eldest sister, "our family no doubt came
of a very old stock; perhaps we belong to the nobility. Our ancestors,
it is thought, came over laden with honors, and no doubt were
embarrassed with riches, though the latter importation has dwindled in
the lapse of years. Respect yourself, and when you grow up you will not
regret that your old and careful aunt did not wish you to play with
butchers' offspring."

I felt mortified that I had ever had a desire to "knuckle up" with any
but kings' sons or sultans' little boys. I longed to be among my equals
in the urchin-line, and fly my kite with only high-born youngsters.

Thus I lived in a constant scene of self-enchantment on the part of the
sisters, who assumed all the port and feeling that properly belong to
ladies of quality. Patrimonial splendor to come danced before their dim
eyes; and handsome settlements, gay equipages, and a general grandeur of
some sort loomed up in the future for the American branch of the House
of Pettibone.

It was a life of opulent self-delusion, which my aunts were never tired
of nursing; and I was too young to doubt the reality of it. All the
members of our little household held up their heads, as if each said, in
so many words, "There is no original sin in _our_ composition, whatever
of that commodity there may be mixed up with the common clay of
Snowborough."

Aunt Patience was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her
through a determined pair of spectacles, and worshipped while she gazed.
T