Lady Baltimore | Page 4

Elder Brother, by Mr. Jervey.
forwards the understanding of Northerners unfamiliar with the South,
and also that friendliness between the two places, which is retarded
chiefly by tactless newspapers.
Ah, tact should have been one of the cardinal virtues; and if I didn't
possess a spice of it myself, I should here thank by name certain two
members of the St. Michael family of Kings Port for their patience with
this comedy, before ever it saw the light. Tact bids us away from many
pleasures; but it can never efface the memory of kindness.

LADY BALTIMORE

I: A Word about My Aunt
Like Adam, our first conspicuous ancestor, I must begin, and lay the
blame upon a woman; I am glad to recognize that I differ from the
father of my sex in no important particular, being as manlike as most of
his sons. Therefore it is the woman, my Aunt Carola, who must bear
the whole reproach of the folly which I shall forthwith confess to you,
since she it was who put it into my head; and, as it was only to make
Eve happy that her husband ever consented to eat the disastrous apple,
so I, save to please my relative, had never aspired to become a Selected
Salic Scion. I rejoice now that I did so, that I yielded to her temptation.
Ours is a wide country, and most of us know but our own corner of it,
while, thanks to my Aunt, I have been able to add another corner. This,
among many other enlightenments of navel and education, do I owe her;
she stands on the threshold of all that is to come; therefore I were
lacking in deference did I pass her and her Scions by without due
mention,--employing no English but such as fits a theme so stately.
Although she never left the threshold, nor went to Kings Port with me,
nor saw the boy, or the girl, or any part of what befell them, she knew
quite well who the boy was. When I wrote her about him, she
remembered one of his grandmothers whom she had visited during her
own girlhood, long before the war, both in Kings Port and at the family
plantation; and this old memory led her to express a kindly interest in
him. How odd and far away that interest seems, now that it has been
turned to cold displeasure!
Some other day, perhaps, I may try to tell you much more than I can
tell you here about Aunt Carola and her Colonial Society--that apple
which Eve, in the form of my Aunt, held out to me. Never had I
expected to feel rise in me the appetite for this particular fruit, though I
had known such hunger to exist in some of my neighbors. Once a
worthy dame of my town, at whose dinner-table young men and
maidens of fashion sit constantly, asked me with much sentiment if I
was aware that she was descended from Boadicea. Why had she never
(I asked her) revealed this to me before? And upon her informing me
that she had learned it only that very day, I exclaimed that it was a great
distance to have descended so suddenly. To this, after a look at me, she

assented, adding that she had the good news from the office of The
American Almanach de Gotha, Union Square, New York; and she
recommended that publication to me. There was but a slight fee to pay,
a matter of fifty dollars or upwards, and for this trifling sum you were
furnished with your rightful coat-of-arms and with papers clearly
tracing your family to the Druids, the Vestal Vir- gins, and all the best
people in the world. Therefore I felicitated the Boadicean lady upon the
illustrious progenitrix with whom the Almanach de Gotha had provided
her for so small a consideration, and observed that for myself I
supposed I should continue to rest content with the thought that in our
enlightened Republic every American was himself a sovereign. But that,
said the lady, after giving me another look, is so different from
Boadicea! And to this I perfectly agreed. Later I had the pleasure to
hear in a roundabout way that she had pronounced me one of the most
agreeable young men in society, though sophisticated. I have not
cherished this against her; my gift of humor puzzles many who can see
only my refinement and my scrupulous attention to dress.
Yes, indeed, I counted myself proof against all Boadiceas. But you
have noticed--have you not?--how, whenever a few people gather
together and style themselves something, and choose a president, and
eight or nine vice-presidents, and a secretary and a treasurer, and a
committee on elections, and then let it be