My Mother, mechanically, and in order to show Austin that she paid, him the compliment of attending to his remarks—"Who split off, my dear?"
"Bless me, Kitty," said my father, in great admiration, "you ask just the question which it is most difficult to answer. An ingenious speculator on races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part of our northern population, (and indeed if his hypothesis could be correct, we must suppose all the ancient worshipers of Odin,) are of the same origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty, I just ask you, why?"
My mother shook her head thoughtfully, and turned the frock to the other side of the light.
"Because, forsooth," cried my father, exploding—"because the Etrurians called their gods 'the Æsar,' and the Scandinavians called theirs 'the Æsir, or Aser! And where do you think he puts their cradle?"
"Cradle!" said my mother, dreamingly—"it must be in the nursery."
Mr. Caxton.—"Exactly—in the nursery of the human race—just here," and my father pointed to the globe; "bounded, you see, by the River Halys, and in that region which, taking its name from Ees or As, (a word designating light or fire) has been immemorially called Asia. Now, Kitty, from Ees or As our ethnological speculator would derive not only Asia, the land, but Æsar or Aser, its primitive inhabitants. Hence he supposes the origin of the Etrurians and the Scandinavians. But, if we give him so much, we must give him more, and deduce from the same origin the Es of the Celt, and the Ized of the Persian, and—what will be of more use to him, I dare say, poor man, than all the rest put together—the Æs of the Romans, that is, the God of Copper-Money—a very powerful household god he is to this day!"
My mother looked musingly at her frock, as if she were taking my father's
Proposition into serious consideration.
"So, perhaps," resumed my father, "and not unconformably with sacred records, from one great parent horde came all these various tribes, carrying with them the name of their beloved Asia; and whether they wandered north, south, or west, exalting their own emphatic designation of 'Children of the Land of Light' into the title of gods. And to think, (added Mr. Caxton pathetically, gazing upon that speck in the globe on which his forefinger rested,)—to think how little they changed for the better when they got to the Don, or entangled their rafts amidst the icebergs of the Baltic—so comfortably off as they were here, if they could but have stayed quiet!"
"And why the deuce could not they?" asked Mr. Squills.
"Pressure of population, and not enough to live upon, I suppose," said my father.