Primmins, this income always yielded enough to satisfy my father's
single hobby for books, pay for my education, and entertain our
neighbors, rarely indeed at dinner, but very often at tea. My dear
mother boasted that our society was very select. It consisted chiefly
of the clergyman and his family; two old maids who gave themselves great
airs; a gentleman who had been in the East India service, and who lived
in a large white house at the top of the hill; some half-a-dozen squires
and their wives and children; Mr. Squills, still a bachelor; and once a
year cards were exchanged--and dinners too--with certain aristocrats who
inspired my mother with a great deal of unnecessary awe, since she
declared they were the most good-natured, easy people in the world, and
always stuck their cards in the most conspicuous part of the looking-
glass frame over the chimney-piece of the best drawing-room. Thus you
perceive that our natural position was one highly creditable to us,
proving the soundness of our finances and the gentility of our
pedigree,--of which last more hereafter. At present I content myself
with saying on that head that even the proudest of the neighboring
squirearchs always spoke of us as a very ancient family. But all my
father ever said, to evince pride of ancestry, was in honor of William
Caxton, citizen and printer in the reign of Edward IV.,--Clarum et
venerabile nomen! an ancestor a man of letters might be justly vain of.

"Heus," said my father, stopping short, and lifting his eyes from the
Colloquies of Erasmus, "salve multum, jucundissime."

Uncle Jack was not much of a scholar, but he knew enough Latin to
answer, "Salve tantundem, mi frater."

My father smiled approvingly. "I see you comprehend true urbanity, or
politeness, as we phrase it. There is an elegance in addressing the