Aunt Patience was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her through a determined pair of spectacles, and worshiped 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 everyday life." He differed with the ladies of our house only cn 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 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 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 school-boy 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 moldy 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 gar

ments 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 heartI am not ashamed to confess it now, although it is forty years since the quartet, 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!" -Atlantic Monthly, 1865.

John Godfrey Saxe
The Coquette

A Portrait

"YOU'RE clever at drawing, I own,"
Said my beautiful cousin Lisette,
As we sat by the window alone,

"But say, can you paint a Coquette?"

"She's painted already," quoth I;

"Nay, nay!" said the laughing Lisette, "Now none of your joking-but try And paint me a thorough Coquette."

"Well, Cousin," at once I began In the ear of the eager Lisette, "I'll paint you as well as I can,

That wonderful thing, a Coquette.

"She wears a most beautiful face" ("Of course," said the pretty Lisette),

"And isn't deficient in grace,

Or else she were not a Coquette.

"And then she is daintily made"

(A smile from the dainty Lisette)

"By people expert in the trade Of forming a proper Coquette.