_your_ family?"

"Well, there you have me, Rulledge. That's where my theory fails. I
can remember," Minver continued soberly, "the talk there used to be
about them among my people. They were serious people in an unreligious
way, or rather an unecclesiastical way. They were never spiritualists,
but I don't think there was one of them who doubted that he should
live hereafter; he might doubt that he was living here, but there was
no question of the other thing. I must say it gave a dignity to their
conversation which, when they met, as they were apt to do at one
another's houses on Sunday nights, was not of common things. One of my
uncles was a merchant, another a doctor; my father was a
portrait-painter by profession, and a sign-painter by practice. I
suppose that's where I got my knack, such as it is. The merchant was
an invalid, rather, though he kept about his business, and our people
merely recognized him as being out of health. He was what we could
call, for that day and region--the Middle West of the early fifties--a
man of unusual refinement. I suppose this was temperamental with him
largely; but he had cultivated tastes, too. I remember him as a
peculiarly gentle person, with a pensive cast of face, and the
melancholy accomplishment of playing the flute."

"I wonder why nobody plays the flute nowadays," I mused aloud.

"Yes, it's quite obsolete," Minver said. "They only play the flute in
the orchestras now. I always look at the man who plays it and think of
my uncle. He used to be very nice to me as a child; and he was very
fond of my father, in a sort of filial way; my father was so much
older. I can remember my young aunt; and how pretty she was as she sat
at the piano, and sang and played to his fluting. When she looked
forward at the music, her curls fell into her neck; they wore curls
then, grown-up women; and though I don't think curls are beautiful, my
aunt's beauty would have been less without them; in fact, I can't
think of her without them.

"She was delicate, too; they were really a pair of invalids; but she
had none of his melancholy. They had had several children, who died,
one after another, and there was only one left at the time I am
speaking of. I rather wonder, now, that the thought of those poor
little ghost-cousins didn't make me uncomfortable. I was a very
superstitious boy, but I seem not to have thought of them. I played
with the little girl who was left, and I liked going to my uncle's