SENATOR HAMMOND'S EXPERIENCE
"The facts that I am about to relate occurred many years ago while I was on a visit to relatives in Charleston, South Carolina. The old house where I was a guest stands on the Battery, and with its beautiful gardens is still one of the show places of the city.
"It was on a warm Sunday afternoon, and I found myself alone in the house, the family and servants at church, and a brooding stillness that presaged the approach of a storm, settling over all. At that time I was a dreamy, romantic, long-haired youth with all sorts of notions about the artistic temperament, carelessness in dress, and painting miniatures for a living. They told me I had some talent, and I believed them thoroughly.
"I had wandered in from the garden, my hands full of flowers for the vases in the library, when a sudden gust of wind tore through the wide hall, the door shut with a bang, and I found myself face to face with my ancestors. Grim gentlemen with somber faces, simpering almond-eyed beauties in cobwebby laces; and in the place of honor a frowning hag, whose wrinkles even the flattering painter dare not hide. Time had added to the sallowness of her complexion, and certain cracks in the canvas but intensified her ugliness. Artistic cracks they were, too, for they fell in just the right places, and heightened the general effect amazingly.
"Doubtless it was from this person, thought I, that I inherited my rather nasty temper and other moral and mental infirmities. I gazed at the lady long and earnestly, for as an ardent believer in heredity I felt that here I had the key to a problem which often worried me. I resolved to look her up at once in the family records.
"But I was saved that trouble.
"'Young man,' piped a high, thin voice close at hand, 'in my day it was considered boorish in the extreme to stare at any one as you are now doing. No gentleman, I am sure, would have been guilty of such a thing. But these modern manners, and modern ways are quite beyond me. Perhaps it is the mode nowadays to ape the rude youths who hung about the London playhouses in my time. N'est'ce pas?'
"I felt decidedly uncomfortable.
"'Pardon me, I——'
"'Stop!' said the voice, which came from the ugly one in the corner, 'stop, if you please! Don't attempt to apologize or explain; it takes too much time, and time with me is very precious just now. You see,' she added in milder tones, 'when one is allowed to have a say only once in a century, and but fifteen minutes at that, one naturally wants to do all the talking. That's perfectly reasonable, is it not? So keep quiet, my dear, and listen to me. No interruptions, if you please.