modern faith of heredity it was well understood that in him the
character of the late Myron Bayne, a maternal great-grandfather, had
revisited the glimpses of the moon--by which orb Bayne had in his
lifetime been sufficiently affected to be a poet of no small Colonial
distinction. If not specially observed, it was observable that while
a Frayser who was not the proud possessor of a sumptuous copy of the
ancestral "poetical works" (printed at the family expense, and long
ago withdrawn from an inhospitable market) was a rare Frayser indeed,
there was an illogical indisposition to honor the great deceased in
the person of his spiritual successor. Halpin was pretty generally
deprecated as an intellectual black sheep who was likely at any
moment to disgrace the flock by bleating in meter. The Tennessee
Fraysers were a practical folk--not practical in the popular sense of
devotion to sordid pursuits, but having a robust contempt for any
qualities unfitting a man for the wholesome vocation of politics.

In justice to young Halpin it should be said that while in him were
pretty faithfully reproduced most of the mental and moral
characteristics ascribed by history and family tradition to the
famous Colonial bard, his succession to the gift and faculty divine
was purely inferential. Not only had he never been known to court
the muse, but in truth he could not have written correctly a line of
verse to save himself from the Killer of the Wise. Still, there was
no knowing when the dormant faculty might wake and smite the lyre.

In the meantime the young man was rather a loose fish, anyhow.
Between him and his mother was the most perfect sympathy, for
secretly the lady was herself a devout disciple of the late and great
Myron Bayne, though with the tact so generally and justly admired in
her sex (despite the hardy calumniators who insist that it is