I was nineteen when I entered the hoary halls of Swiftmouth. I call them hoary, because they had been built more than fifty years. To me they seemed uncommonly hoary, and I snuffed antiquity in the dusty purlieus. I now began to study, in good earnest, the wisdom of the past. I saw clearly the value of dead men and mouldy precepts, especially if the former had been entombed a thousand years, and if the latter were well done in sounding Greek and Latin. I began to reverence royal lines of deceased monarchs, and longed to connect my own name, now growing into college popularity, with some far-off mighty one who had ruled in pomp and luxury his obsequious people. The trunk in Snowborough troubled my dreams. In that receptacle still slept the proof of our family distinction. "I will go," quoth I, "to the home of my aunts next vacation and there learn how we became mighty, and discover precisely why we don't practise to-day our inherited claims to glory."
I went to Snowborough. Aunt Patience was now anxious to lay before her impatient nephew the proof he burned to behold. But first she must explain. All the old family documents and letters were, no doubt, destroyed in the great fire of '98, as nothing in the shape of parchment or paper implying nobility had ever been discovered in Snowborough, or elsewhere. But—there had been preserved, for many years, a suit of imperial clothes, that had been worn by their great-grandfather in England, and, no doubt, in the New World also. These garments had been carefully watched and guarded; for were they not the proof that their owner belonged to a station in life, second, if second at all, to the royal court of King George itself? Precious casket, into which I was soon to have the privilege of gazing! Through how many long years these fond, foolish virgins had lighted their unflickering lamps of expectation and hope at this cherished old shrine!
I was now on my way to the family repository of all our greatness. I went up stairs "on the jump." We all knelt down before the well-preserved box; and my proud Aunt Patience, in a somewhat reverent manner, turned the key. My heart,—I am not ashamed to confess it now, although it is forty years since the quartette, in search of family honors, were on their knees that summer afternoon in Snowborough,—my heart beat high. I was about to look on that which might be a duke's or an earl's regalia. And I was descended from the owner in a direct line! I had lately been reading Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus"; and I remembered, there before the trunk, the lines,—
"O sacred receptacle of my joys,
Sweet cell of virtue and nobility!"
The lid went up, and the sisters began to unroll the precious garments, which seemed all enshrined in aromatic gums and spices. The odor of that interior lives with me to this day; and I grow faint with the memory of that hour. With pious precision the clothes were uncovered, and at last the whole suit was laid before my expectant eyes.
Reader! I am an old man now, and have not long to walk this planet. But, whatever dreadful shock may be in reserve for my declining years, I am certain I can bear it; for I went through that scene at Snowborough, and still live!
When the garments were fully displayed, all the aunts looked at me. I had been to college; I had studied Burke's "Peerage"; I had been once to New York. Perhaps I could immediately name the exact station in noble British life to which that suit of clothes belonged. I could; I saw it all at a glance. I grew flustered and pale. I dared not look my poor deluded female relatives in the face.
"What rank in the peerage do these gold-laced garments and big buttons betoken?" cried all three.
"It is a suit of servant's livery!" gasped I, and fell back with a shudder.
That evening, after the sun had gone down, we buried those hateful garments in a ditch at the bottom of the garden. Rest there, perturbed body-coat, yellow trousers, brown gaiters, and all!