admiration by the discovery that his dusky sadness of nature and
expression was, as it were, the expiring gleam and late twilight of
ancestral splendors, I doubt if Mr. Bourne would have preferred him
for book-keeper a moment sooner upon that account. In truth, I have
observed, down town, that the fact of your ancestors doing nothing, is
not considered good proof that you can do anything.

But Prue and her sex regard sentiment more than action, and I
understand easily enough why she is never tired of hearing me read of
Prince Charlie. If Titbottom had been only a little younger, a little
handsomer, a little more gallantly dressed--in fact, a little more of
a Prince Charlie, I am sure her eyes would not have fallen again upon
her work so tranquilly, as he resumed his story.

"I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, although I was a very young
child, and he was a very old man. My young mother and my young
grandmother are very distinct figures in my memory, ministering to the
old gentleman, wrapped in his dressing-gown, and seated upon the
piazza. I remember his white hair, and his calm smile, and how, not
long before he died, he called me to him, and laying his hand upon my
head, said to me:

"'My child, the world is not this great sunny piazza, nor life the
fairy stories which the women tell you here, as you sit in their
laps. I shall soon be gone, but I want to leave with you some memento
of my love for you, and I know of nothing more valuable than these
spectacles, which your grandmother brought from her native island,
when she arrived here one fine summer morning, long ago. I cannot tell
whether, when you grow older, you will regard them as a gift of the
greatest value, or as something that you had been happier never to