brightest part, is the head; and the tail, although long and luminous,
is gradually shaded into obscurity.

Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of ancestry increases in
the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers
that he was knighted--a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived
humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the
twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was
so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lucifer
has a box at the opera. On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a
match fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers. But if he should be at a
Poictiers, he would run away. Then history would be sorry--not only
for his cowardice, but for the shame it brings upon old Adam's name.

So, if Minim Sculpin is a bad young man, he not only shames himself,
but he disgraces that illustrious line of ancestors, whose characters
are known. His neighbor, Mudge, has no pedigree of this kind, and
when he reels homeward, we do not suffer the sorrow of any fair Lady
Dorothy in such a descendant--we pity him for himself alone. But
genius and power are so imperial and universal, that when Minim
Sculpin falls, we are grieved not only for him, but for that eternal
truth and beauty which appeared in the valor of Sir Shark, and the
loveliness of Lady Dorothy. His neighbor Mudge's grandfather may have
been quite as valorous and virtuous as Sculpin's; but we know of the
one, and we do not know of the other.

Therefore, Prue, I say to my wife, who has, by this time, fallen as
soundly asleep as if I had been preaching a real sermon, do not let
Mrs. Mudge feel hurt, because I gaze so long and earnestly upon the
portrait of the fair Lady Sculpin, and, lost in dreams, mingle in a