vantage
as in this play for the reason that it gives opportunity for broader
and more effective lights and shades than anything she has hitherto
given us."

When Knighthood Was in Flower

When Knighthood Was in Flower....

_The Caskodens_

We Caskodens take great pride in our ancestry. Some persons, I know,
hold all that to be totally un-Solomonlike and the height of vanity,
but they, usually, have no ancestors of whom to be proud. The man who
does not know who his great-grandfather was, naturally enough would
not care what he was. The Caskodens have pride of ancestry because
they know both who and what.

Even admitting that it is vanity at all, it is an impersonal sort of
failing, which, like the excessive love of country, leans virtueward;
for the man who fears to disgrace his ancestors is certainly less
likely to disgrace himself. Of course there are a great many excellent
persons who can go no farther back than father and mother, who,
doubtless, eat and drink and sleep as well, and love as happily, as if
they could trace an unbroken lineage clear back to Adam or Noah, or
somebody of that sort. Nevertheless, we Caskodens are proud of our
ancestry, and expect to remain so to the end of the chapter,
regardless of whom it pleases or displeases.

We have a right to be proud, for there is an unbroken male line from
William the Conqueror down to the present time. In this lineal list
are fourteen Barons--the title lapsed when Charles I fell--twelve
Knights of the Garter and forty-seven Knights of the Bath and other
orders. A Caskoden distinguished himself by gallant service under the
Great Norman and was given rich English lands and a fair Saxon bride,
albeit an unwilling one, as his reward. With this fair, unwilling
Saxon bride and her long plait of yellow hair goes a very pretty,
pathetic story, which I may tell you at some future time if you take
kindly to this. A Caskoden was seneschal to William Rufus, and sat at
the rich, half barbaric banquets in the first Great Hall. Still
another was one of the doughty barons who wrested from John the Great
Charter, England's declaration of independence; another was high in
the councils of Henry V. I have omitted one whom I should not fail to
mention: Adjodika Caskoden, who was a member of the Dunce Parliament
of Henry IV, so called because there were no lawyers in it.

It is true that in the time of Edward IV a Caskoden did stoop to
trade, but it was trade