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The introductory chapters are of that elephantine facetiousness which pleased our great-grandfathers, but which is exceedingly tedious to modern taste; and the humor of the book occasionally has a breadth that is indelicate to our apprehension, though it perhaps did not shock our great-grandmothers.
It isn't generally known, but one of my great-grandfathers was present when the original 400 landed at Plymouth Rock. My great-grandfather owned the Rock. A couple of nights after the original 400 landed on Plymouth Rock the leader of the smart set, Mrs. Von Tweedledum, gave a full dress ball.
It was an age of accumulation, of uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshipped by these men, just as the reliques of the Holy Land had been adored by their great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the crusades was revived in this quest of the holy grail of ancient knowledge.
'Possum's family had been gifted in that peculiar way, and by and by, when he woke up, and stretched, and moved back in the shade, and leaned against a stump to smoke, they asked him. Mr. 'Possum said it was a very old story, because it had happened about a hundred and fifty-six great-grandfathers back.
I know nothing about him." "He's in some way related to you?" "Our great-grandfathers were half-brothers. What does that make us?" "Twentieth cousins, say. And where does your twentieth cousin live?" "At a place called Lackley in Middleshire." I thought it over. "Well, suppose we look up Lackley in Middleshire!" He got straight up. "Go and see it?" "Go and see it."
One constantly sees cases of poor people sent to prison because they happen to have children. No other reason can be detected. Our great-grandfathers' doctors never used to trouble themselves to write prescriptions for their poorer patients; they used to keep two or three mixtures always made up ready in great jars, and ladle them out.
But something, something which will develop a real value, both to yourself and to your fellow-man. We have it. We have inherited it. We got it from our grandfathers our great-grandfathers, in a few cases men who wanted to know to learn to learn by doing. It is a powerful force.
Had not his fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers given high-air circus performances of a springtime, in the days when bison and passenger pigeons inherited their full share of the earth, before our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had even seen America?
"If mamma will surrender to me the key of that great wardrobe, up stairs, which contains the brocade dresses, shoe-buckles, knee-buckles, etc., of our great-grandfathers and grandmothers, I will promise to supply dresses for our own party, at least, with a little aid from the needles and scissors." "I bar scissors," cried Col. Donaldson. "Those venerable heir-looms "
To have sent thee feet foremost to Winchester, to lie by thy grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and then to tell Norman William that he must fight it out henceforth, not with a straw malkin like thee, which the very crows are not afraid to perch on, but with a cock of a very different hackle, Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark." And Hereward drew Brain-biter.
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