We Caskodens take great pride in our ancestry. Some persons, I know,
hold all that to be totally un-Solomonlike and the height of vanity,
but they, usually, have no ancestors of whom to be proud. The man who
does not know who his great-grandfather was, naturally enough would
not care what he was. The Caskodens have pride of ancestry because
they know both who and what.

Even admitting that it is vanity at all, it is an impersonal sort of
failing, which, like the excessive love of country, leans virtueward;
for the man who fears to disgrace his ancestors is certainly less
likely to disgrace himself. Of course there are a great many excellent
persons who can go no farther back than father and mother, who,
doubtless, eat and drink and sleep as well, and love as happily, as if
they could trace an unbroken lineage clear back to Adam or Noah, or
somebody of that sort. Nevertheless, we Caskodens are proud of our
ancestry, and expect to remain so to the end of the chapter,
regardless of whom it pleases or displeases.

We have a right to be proud, for there is an unbroken male line from
William the Conqueror down to the present time. In this lineal list
are fourteen Barons--the title lapsed when Charles I fell--twelve
Knights of the Garter and forty-seven Knights of the Bath and other
orders. A Caskoden distinguished himself by gallant service under the
Great Norman and was given rich English lands and a fair Saxon bride,
albeit an unwilling one, as his reward. With this fair, unwilling
Saxon bride and her long plait of yellow hair goes a very pretty,
pathetic story, which I may tell you at some future time if you take
kindly to this. A Caskoden was seneschal to William Rufus, and sat at
the rich, half barbaric banquets in the first Great Hall. Still