tin. One is over: why should the other
last? Aha! I know why you hang back: you think that we may quarrel about
it!"

"About what, Roland?"

"About it, I say; and I'll be d--d if we do!" cried my uncle, reddening.
"And I have been thinking a great deal upon the matter, and I have no
doubt you are right. So I brought the old parchment with me, and you
shall see me fill up the blank just as you would have it. Now, then,
you will come and live with me, and we can never quarrel any more."
Thus saying, Uncle Roland looked round for pen and ink; and having found
them,--not without difficulty, for they had been submerged under the
overflow of the pedigree,--he was about to fill up the lacuna, or
hiatus, which had given rise to such memorable controversy, with the
name of "William Caxton, printer in the Sanctuary," when my father,
slowly recovering his breath, and aware of his brother's purpose,
intervened. It would have done your heart good to hear them, so
completely, in the inconsistency of human nature, had they changed sides
upon the question,--my father now all for Sir William de Caxton, the
hero of Bosworth; my uncle all for the immortal printer. And in
this discussion they grew animated their eyes sparkled, their voices
rose,--Roland's voice deep and thunderous, Austin's sharp and piercing.
Mr. Squills stopped his ears. Thus it arrived at that point, when my
uncle doggedly came to the end of all argumentation,--"I swear that it
shall be so;" and my father, trying the last resource of pathos, looked
pleadingly into Roland's eyes, and said, with a tone soft as mercy,
"Indeed, brother, it must not." Meanwhile the dry parchment crisped,
creaked, and trembled in every pore of its yellow skin.

"But," said I, coming in opportunely, like the Horatian deity, "I
don't see that either of you gentlemen has a right so to dispose of my
ancestry. It is quite clear that a man has no possession in posterity.
Posterity may possess him; but deuce a bit will he ever be the better
for his great great-grandchildren!"

Squills.--"Hear, hear!"

Pisistratus (warming).--"But a man's ancestry is a positive property to
him. How much, not only of acres, but of his constitution, his temper,
his conduct, character, and nature, he may inherit from some progenitor
ten times removed! Nay, without that progenitor would he ever have been
born,--would a Squills ever have introduced him into the world, or a
nurse ever have carried him upo kolpo!"