My name is Esek Pettibone, and I wish to affirm in the outset that it is
a good thing to be well-born. In thus connecting the mention of my name
with a positive statement, I am not unaware that a catastrophe lies
coiled up in the juxtaposition. But I cannot help writing plainly that I
am still in favor of a distinguished family-tree. ESTO PERPETUA! To have
had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting. To
be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but
respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick,
I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done _him_ in
the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of
Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington,
I thought the Duke felt a propensity to "hunch up some." Somehow it is
pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to do so.
Left an orphan at the tender age of four years, having no brothers or
sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell
into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar.
Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's
side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked
about for protection; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately way,
said,--"The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never want while
his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with my plain, but
benignant protectors, in the State of New Hampshire.
During my boyhood, the best-drilled lesson that fell to my keeping was
this:--"Respect yourself. We come of more than ordinary parentage.
Superior blood was probably concerned in getting up the Pettibones. Hold
your head erect, and some day you shall have proof of your high
lineage."
I remember once, on being told that I must not share my juvenile sports
with the butcher's three little beings, I begged to know why not. Aunt
Eunice looked at Patience, and Mary Ann knew what she meant.
"My child," slowly murmured the eldest sister, "our family no doubt came
of a very old stock; perhaps we belong to the nobility. Our ancestors,
it is thought, came over laden with honors, and no doubt were
embarrassed with riches, though the latter importation has dwindled in
the lapse of years. Respect yourself, and when you grow up you will not
regret that your old and careful aunt did not wish you to play with
butchers' offspring."
I felt mortified that I had ever had a desire to "knuckle up" with any
but kings' sons or sultans' little boys. I longed to be among my equals
in the urchin-line, and fly my kite with only high-born youngsters.
Thus I lived in a constant scene of self-enchantment on the part of the
sisters, who assumed all the port and feeling that properly belong to
ladies of quality. Patrimonial splendor to come danced before their dim
eyes; and handsome settlements, gay equipages, and a general grandeur of
some sort loomed up in the future for the American branch of the House
of Pettibone.
It was a life of opulent self-delusion, which my aunts were never tired
of nursing; and I was too young to doubt the reality of it. All the
members of our little household held up their heads, as if each said, in
so many words, "There is no original sin in _our_ composition, whatever
of that commodity there may be mixed up with the common clay of
Snowborough."
Aunt Patience was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her
through a determined pair of spectacles, and worshipped while she gazed.
The 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 snuffed antiquity in the dusty
purlieus. I now began to study, in good earnest, the wisdom of the past.
I saw clearly the value of dead men and mouldy precepts, especially if
the former had been entombed a thousand years, and if the latter were
well done in sounding Greek and Latin. I began to reverence royal lines
of deceased monarchs, and longed to connect my own name, now growing
into college popularity, with some far-off mighty one who had ruled in
pomp and luxury his obsequious people. The trunk in Snowborough troubled
my dreams. In that receptacle still slept the proof of our family
distinction. "I will go," quoth I, "to the home of my aunts next
vacation and there learn _how_ we became mighty, and discover precisely
why we don't practise to-day our inherited claims to glory."
I went to Snowborough. Aunt Patience was now anxious to lay before her
impatient nephew the proof he burned to behold. But first she must
explain. All the old family documents and letters were, no doubt,
destroyed in the great fire of '98, as nothing in the shape of parchment
or paper implying nobility had ever been discovered in Snowborough, or
elsewhere. _But_--there had been preserved, for many years, a suit of
imperial clothes, that had been worn by their great-grandfather in
England, and, no doubt, in the New World also. These garments had been
carefully watched and guarded; for were they not the proof that their
owner belonged to a station in life, second, if second at all, to the
royal court of King George itself? Precious casket, into which I was
soon to have the privilege of gazing! Through how many long years these
fond, foolish virgins had lighted their unflickering lamps of
expectation and hope at this cherished old shrine!
I was now on my way to the family repository of all our greatness. I
went up stairs "on the jump." We all knelt down before the
well-preserved box; and my proud Aunt Patience, in a somewhat reverent
manner, turned the key. My heart,--I am not ashamed to confess it now,
although it is forty years since the quartette, in search of family
honors, were on their knees that summer afternoon in Snowborough,--my
heart beat high. I was about to look on that which might be a duke's or
an earl's regalia. And I was descended from the owner in a direct line!
I had lately been reading Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus"; and I
remembered, there before the trunk, the lines,--
"O sacred receptacle of my joys,
Sweet cell of virtue and nobility!"
The lid went up, and the sisters began to unroll the precious garments,
which seemed all enshrined in aromatic gums and spices. The odor of that
interior lives with me to this day; and I grow faint with the memory of
that hour. With pious precision the clothes were uncovered, and at last
the whole suit was laid before my expectant eyes.
Reader! I am an old man now, and have not long to walk this planet. But,
whatever dreadful shock may be in reserve for my declining years, I am
certain I can bear it; for I went through that scene at Snowborough, and
still live!
When the garments were fully displayed, all the aunts looked at me. I
had been to college; I had studied Burke's "Peerage"; I had been once to
New York. Perhaps I could immediately name the exact station in noble
British life to which that suit of clothes belonged. I could; I saw it
all at a glance. I grew flustered and pale. I dared not look my poor
deluded female relatives in the face.
"What rank in the peerage do these gold-laced garments and big buttons
betoken?" cried all three.
"_It is a suit of servant's livery!_" gasped I, and fell back with a
shudder.
That evening, after the sun had gone down, we buried those hateful
garments in a ditch at the bottom of the garden. Rest there, perturbed
body-coat, yellow trousers, brown gaiters, and all!
"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!"