to express a kindly interest in him. How odd and far away that interest
seems, now that it has been turned to cold displeasure!

Some other day, perhaps, I may try to tell you much more than I can tell
you here about Aunt Carola and her Colonial Society--that apple which
Eve, in the form of my Aunt, held out to me. Never had I expected to feel
rise in me the appetite for this particular fruit, though I had known
such hunger to exist in some of my neighbors. Once a worthy dame of my
town, at whose dinner-table young men and maidens of fashion sit
constantly, asked me with much sentiment if I was aware that she was
descended from Boadicea. Why had she never (I asked her) revealed this to
me before? And upon her informing me that she had learned it only that
very day, I exclaimed that it was a great distance to have descended so
suddenly. To this, after a look at me, she assented, adding that she had
the good news from the office of The American Almanach de Gotha, Union
Square, New York; and she recommended that publication to me. There was
but a slight fee to pay, a matter of fifty dollars or upwards, and for
this trifling sum you were furnished with your rightful coat-of-arms and
with papers clearly tracing your family to the Druids, the Vestal Virgins,
and all the best people in the world. Therefore I felicitated the
Boadicean lady upon the illustrious progenitrix with whom the Almanach de
Gotha had provided her for so small a consideration, and observed that
for myself I supposed I should continue to rest content with the thought
that in our enlightened Republic every American was himself a sovereign.
But that, said the lady, after giving me another look, is so different
from Boadicea! And to this I perfectly agreed. Later I had the pleasure
to hear in a roundabout way that she had pronounced me one of the most
agreeable young men in society, though sophisticated. I have not
cherished this against her; my gift of humor puzzles many who can see
only my refinement and my scrupulous attention to dress.