he youngest sister lived in a dreamy state of honors to come, and had
constant zoological visions of lions, griffins, and unicorns, drawn and
quartered in every possible style known to the Heralds' College. The
Reverend Hebrew Bullet, who used to drop in quite often and drink
several compulsory glasses of home-made wine, encouraged his three
parishioners in their aristocratic notions, and extolled them for what
he called their "stooping down to every-day life." He differed with the
ladies of our house only on one point. He contended that the unicorn of
the Bible and the rhinoceros of to-day were one and the same animal. My
aunts held a different opinion.

In the sleeping-room of my Aunt Patience reposed a trunk. Often during
my childish years I longed to lift the lid and spy among its contents
the treasures my young fancy conjured up as lying there in state. I
dared not ask to have the cover raised for my gratification, as I had
often been told I was "too little" to estimate aright what that armorial
box contained. "When you grow up, you shall see the inside of it," Aunt
Mary Ann used to say to me; and so I wondered, and wished, but all in
vain. I must have the virtue of _years_ before I could view the
treasures of past magnificence so long entombed in that wooden
sarcophagus. Once I saw the faded sisters bending over the trunk
together, and, as I thought, embalming something in camphor. Curiosity
impelled me to linger, but, under some pretext, I was nodded out of the
room.

Although my kinswomen's means were far from ample, they determined that
Swiftmouth College should have the distinction of calling me one of her
sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation to a
neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country
boarding-houses told upon my self-importance as the descendant of a
great Englishman, notwithstanding all my letters from the honored three
came freighted with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity
of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of
respectability is apt to give place to the levity of football and other
low-toned accomplishments. The book of life, at that period, opens
readily at fun and frolic, and the insignia of greatness give the
schoolboy no envious pangs.

I was nineteen when I entered the hoary halls of Swiftmouth. I call
them hoary, because they had been built more than fifty years. To me
they seemed uncommonly hoary, and I snu