“Ancestors who wrote books; thank you.”
Here Roland offered his snuff-box to my father, who, abhorring snuff, benignly imbibed a pinch, and sneezed five times in consequence,—an excuse for Uncle Roland to say, which he did five times, with great unction, “God bless you, brother Austin!”
As soon as my father had recovered himself, he proceeded, with tears in his eyes, but calm as before the interruption—for he was of the philosophy of the Stoics,—
“But it is not that which is awful. It is the presuming to vie with these ‘spirits elect;’ to say to them, ‘Make way,—I too claim place with the chosen. I too would confer with the living, centuries after the death that consumes my dust. I too—’ Ah, Pisistratus! I wish Uncle Jack had been at Jericho before he had brought me up to London and placed me in the midst of those rulers of the world!”
I was busy, while my father spoke, in making some pendent shelves for these “spirits elect;” for my mother, always provident where my father’s comforts were concerned, had foreseen the necessity of some such accommodation in a hired lodging-house, and had not only carefully brought up to town my little box of tools, but gone out herself that morning to buy the raw materials. Checking the plane in its progress over the smooth deal, “My dear father,” said I, “if at the Philhellenic Institute I had looked with as much awe as you do on the big fellows that had gone before me, I should have stayed, to all eternity, the lag of the Infant Division.”
“Pisistratus, you are as great an agitator as your namesake,” cried my father, smiling. “And so, a fig for the big fellows!”
And now my mother entered in her pretty evening cap, all smiles and good humor, having just arranged a room for Uncle Roland, concluded advantageous negotiations with the laundress, held high council with Mrs. Primmins on the best mode of defeating the extortions of London tradesmen, and, pleased with herself and all the world, she kissed my father’s forehead as it bent over his notes, and came to the tea-table, which only waited its presiding deity. My Uncle Roland, with his usual gallantry, started up, kettle in hand (our own urn—for we had one—not being yet unpacked), and having performed with soldier-like method the chivalrous office thus volunteered, he joined me at my employment, and said,—
“There is a better steel for the hands of a well-born lad than a carpenter’s plane.”
“Aha! Uncle—that depends—”
“Depends! What on?”