They were descended, as you will probably expect, from the
Ashburnham who accompanied Charles I to the scaffold, and, as
you must also expect with this class of English people, you would
never have noticed it. Mrs Ashburnham was a Powys; Florence
was a Hurlbird of Stamford, Connecticut, where, as you know,
they are more old-fashioned than even the inhabitants of Cranford,
England, could have been. I myself am a Dowell of Philadelphia,
Pa., where, it is historically true, there are more old English
families than you would find in any six English counties taken
together. I carry about with me, indeed--as if it were the only thing
that invisibly anchored me to any spot upon the globe--the title
deeds of my farm, which once covered several blocks between
Chestnut and Walnut Streets. These title deeds are of wampum,
the grant of an Indian chief to the first Dowell, who left Farnham
in Surrey in company with William Penn. Florence's people, as is
so often the case with the inhabitants of Connecticut, came from
the neighbourhood of Fordingbridge, where the Ashburnhams'
place is. From there, at this moment, I am actually writing.

You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many.
For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack
of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down
what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of
generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight
out of their heads.

Some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the
whole sack of Rome by the Goths, and I swear to you that the
breaking up of our little four-square coterie was such another
unthinkable event. Supposing that you should come upon us