ment. It was not known whether two or three
brothers sailed together from the Old World and settled in the New.
They had no portrait, nor curious chair, nor rusty weapon--no old
Bible, nor drinking cup, nor remnant of brocade.

_Morgeson_--_Born_--_Lived_--_Died_--were all their archives. But
there is a dignity in mere perpetuity, a strength in the narrowest
affinities. This dignity and strength were theirs. They are still
vital in our rural population. Occasionally something fine is their
result; an aboriginal reappears to prove the plastic powers of nature.

My great-grandfather, Locke Morgeson, the old man whose head I saw
bound in a red handkerchief, was the first noticeable man of the name.
He was a scale of enthusiasms, ranging from the melancholy to the
sarcastic. When I heard him talked of, it seemed to me that he was
born under the influence of the sea, while the rest of the tribe
inherited the character of the landscape. Comprehension of life, and
comprehension of self, came too late for him to make either of value.
The spirit of progress, however, which prompted his schemes benefited
others. The most that could be said of him was that he had the
rudiments of a Founder.

My father, whose name was Locke Morgeson also, married early. My
mother was five years his elder; her maiden name was Mary Warren. She
was the daughter of Philip Warren, of Barmouth, near Surrey. He was
the best of the Barmouth tailors, though he never changed the cut of
his garments; he was a rigidly pious man, of great influence in the
church, and was descended from Sir Edward Warren, a gentleman of
Devon, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. The name of his more
immediate ancestor, Richard Warren, was in "New England's Memorial."
How father first met mother I know not. She was singularly
beautiful--beautiful even to the day of her death; but she was poor,
and without connection, for Philip Warren was the last of his name.
What the Warrens might have been was nothing to the Morgesons; they
themselves had no past, and only realized the present. They never
thought of inquiring into that matter, so they opposed, with great
promptness, father's wish to marry Mary Warren. All, except old Locke
Morgeson, his grandfather, who rode over to Barmouth to see her one
day, and when he came back told father to take her, offered him half
his house to live in, and promised to push him in the world. His offer
quelled the rioters, silencing in particular t