t oh! the golden thread was wove
Between my sister's heart and mine."

WILLIS.

Half an hour later, uncle Ro and myself were seated at table, eating our
dinners as quietly as if we were in an inn. The footman who had set the
table was an old family servant, one who had performed the same sort of
duty in that very house for a quarter of a century. Of course he was not
an American, no _man_ of American birth ever remaining so long a time in
an inferior station, or in any station so low as that of a
house-servant. If he has good qualities enough to render it desirable to
keep him, he is almost certain to go up in the world; if not, one does
not care particularly about having him. But Europeans are less elastic
and less ambitious, and it is no uncommon thing to find one of such an
origin remaining a long time in the same service. Such had been the fact
with this man, who had followed my own parents from Europe, when they
returned from their marriage tour, and had been in the house on the
occasion of my birth. From that time he had continued at the Nest, never
marrying, nor ever manifesting the smallest wish for any change. He was
an Englishman by birth; and what is very unusual in a servant of that
country, when transferred to America, the "letting-up," which is certain
to attend such a change from the depression of the original condition to
that in which he is so suddenly placed, had not made him saucy. An
American is seldom what is called impudent, under any circumstances; he
is careless, nay ignorant of forms; pays little or no purely
conventional respect; does not understand half the social distinctions
which exist among the higher classes of even his own countrymen, and
fancies there are equalities in things about which, in truth, there is
great inequality between himself and others, merely because he has been
taught that all men are equal in rights; but he is so unconscious of any
pressure as seldom to feel a disposition to revenge himself by
impudence.

But, while John was not impudent either, he had a footman's feeling
towards those whom he fancied no better than himself. He had set the
table with his customary neatness and method, and he served the soup
with as much regularity as he would have done had we sat there in our
proper characters, but then he withdrew. He probably remembered that the
landlord, or upper servant of an English hotel, is apt to make his
appearance with the soup, and to disapp