ir scanty wardrobes, store of domestic traditions in
their brains, and a whole Court Guide of high-sounding names at their
fingers' ends. They can tell you of the supposed sister of an English
queen, who married an American officer and dwelt in Oldport; of the
Scotch Lady Janet, who eloped with her tutor, and here lived in
poverty, paying her washerwoman with costly lace from her trunks; of
the Oldport dame who escaped from France at the opening of the
Revolution, was captured by pirates on her voyage to America, then
retaken by a privateer and carried into Boston, where she took refuge
in John Hancock's house. They can describe to you the Malbone Gardens,
and, as the night wanes and the embers fade, can give the tale of the
Phantom of Rough Point. Gliding farther and farther into the past, they
revert to the brilliant historic period of Oldport, the successive
English and French occupations during our Revolution, and show you
gallant inscriptions in honor of their grandmothers, written on the
window-panes by the diamond rings of the foreign officers.

The newer strata of Oldport society are formed chiefly by importation,
and have the one advantage of a variety of origin which puts
provincialism out of the question. The mild winter climate and the
supposed cheapness of living draw scattered families from the various
Atlantic cities; and, coming from such different sources, these
visitors leave some exclusiveness behind. The boast of heraldry, the
pomp of power, are doubtless good things to have in one's house, but
are cumbrous to travel with. Meeting here on central ground, partial
aristocracies tend to neutralize each other. A Boston family comes,
bristling with genealogies, and making the most of its little all of
two centuries. Another arrives from Philadelphia, equally fortified in
local heraldries unknown in Boston.

A third from New York brings a briefer pedigree, but more gilded. Their
claims are incompatible; but there is no common standard, and so
neither can have precedence. Since no human memory can retain the
great-grandmothers of three cities, we are practically as well off as
if we had no great-grandmothers at all.

But in Oldport, as elsewhere, the spice of conversation is apt to be in
inverse ratio to family tree and income-tax, and one can hear better
repartees among the boat-builders' shops on Long Wharf than among those
who have made the grand tour. All the world over, one is occasionally
reminded