in his string of hotels, and in the second place, he was a good sport and enormously fond of Adelaide.

But every time I got a peek into Jerry's mode of life, I was newly convinced that if there was a martyr left unburned, he was he. The first time I went out, Mrs. Caroline SumterSlocum Wilkstone pulled the bell-rope and called for the Lafayette goblets. Yes, she always pulled a bell-rope instead of pressing a button; the pushbutton system she

regarded as too modern and vulgar. Apropos of nothing at all to drink, Mrs. Wilkstone displayed these silver containers that had such noble possibilities in that direction, and told me all about them.

"During the Marquis's second visit to America, in the eighteen-twenties," she volunteered, in her aristocratic, cold-storage manner, "he was the guest of my grandfather and grandmother, Cornelius Sumter Wilkstone and Maria Slocum Wilkstone. These goblets are a memento of that

in the hem that had been caused by Lafayette's noble number eights, I suppose, when he stepped on the lady's dress. There was a long string of other anec

dotes, reaching back to Peter the Great, Gustavus Adolphus, Marcus Aurelius, and a bunch of others that I couldn't keep score on, but Lafayette was the family pet. The second and third and every other time I went out to Jerry's, I had to listen to the story of that historic presentation.

Poor Jerry winced every time the goblets were brought out and the marquis's name was dragged back into the family circle. I couldn't blame him. It seemed to me a hundred years was a long enough time to make a fuss over the home-brew mugs, and it was about time for Mother Wilkstone to tune in for another station. I could have replaced the set for a hundred dollars, easily, and Jerry's wife had better ones, for that matter, in the silver service Jerry had given her. But Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, had cast the spell of aristocracy on these particular containers, and it wasn't any use hoping Mother Wilkstone would reform.

happy occasion. They were presented by Marquis de Lafayette to the Wilkstones in appreciation of their hospitality and friendship."

Then I had to rave over the faded evening gown that Maria Slocum Wilkstone had worn when she danced with Lafayette. There were even a couple of rents

VOL. LXXVIII.-6

And every now and then in the course of a dinner she and Aunt Abelina slipped in a remark that had all the earmarks of a dirty dig, to the effect that no Wilk

stone had ever been "in trade." That was what made me want to light a fire under Jerry. How he could put up with these slams, all the time he was providing the sinews of luxury for these particular Wilkstones, was more than I could understand.

"Jerry," I told him, after resisting the temptation as long as I could, "I'm going to say something sharp and easy to remember, one of these evenings, if you don't quit inviting me out to hear the new jokes on Lafayette and Charlemagne. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't keep rubbing it in about your ancestors being such a total loss."

"Oh, well," said Jerry. He always said that. "They can't make me mad. If they get a lot of pleasure out of thinking what a fine lot of highway robbers their baron ancestors were, let 'em."

"All right. If you don't say something, I will. That's all."

"Easy on the whip, George. Don't start anything worse than there is between me and my in-laws."

I promised I wouldn't, but when they sprang that one about Aunt Molly Sumter, it was too good an opening to miss.

General Tarleton, according to the story, was a first-class gentleman even if he did wear a red coat. One time when he tramped down with a couple of regiments on the Sumter branch of the Wilkstone family, in Virginia, he did Aunt Molly Sumter the honor of quartering his officers in her mansion, while Uncle General Philip Sumter was busy up around Saratoga.

Being a gentleman of noble birth and all that sort of thing, the general invited Aunt Molly to dine at the table with his officers, and Aunt Molly coldly accepted. Then they drank a lot of Uncle General Philip Sumter's best Madeira, and General Tarleton asked Aunt Molly to propose a toast. Aunt Molly waved a goblet toward the ceiling and orated:

"O Lord above, send down thy love
With sharpest swords and sickles,
And cut the throats of these red-coats
For eating up my victuals."

Mother Wilkstone looked around for applause to follow that one, and I furnished it.

"Good for Aunt Molly!" I burst out. "That's the way to talk to non-paying guests who don't appreciate what you do for them."

There was a silence as dead as King Tut's favorite door-nail, and I could see it hadn't taken any time at all for this subtle, rapier-like thrust to dig in.

Between the cold glares, I managed to slip in another wallop, when the talk drifted naturally back to William the Conqueror.

"You know, Jerry," I observed, being careful not to address the ladies because I wasn't being spoken to, just then. “I was reading the other day about this fellow Wilhelm the Conqueror, and it seems he was just a big Swede who couldn't read and write.'

"No!" sputtered Jerry, trying to keep from grinning. "That's wrong, isn't it, Mother Wilkstone?"

"How crassly absurd and ignorant! William the Conqueror was a NormanFrench nobleman, the scion of a distinguished line!"

"Yes, but this fellow writing the article says the Norman-French were just hardfisted Swedes that came down and took Normandy away from the Frogs." It was a glorious chance, and I had to use it. "Besides, they say William didn't stand so well in his own day, and slew a few thousand taxpayers because they kept talking about his birth and breeding."

More silence, like the North Pole at 2 A. M.

"Oh, he was a radical writer-one of these Bolsheviks who ought not to be allowed to write such things." Jerry kicked me under the table, but I couldn't resist the evil temptation. "He said Charlemagne never used soap and ate without a knife and fork. Just picked up half a cow and gnawed it, and then threw the bone forty feet across the hall to his pet mastiff."

"How utterly disgusting!" Mrs. Wilkstone insulted my ancestors all the way back to Adam, with one withering look. "It certainly is true that it takes three generations to make a gentleman.

"Maybe Charley didn't have.but two back of him," I suggested, like I thought she was talking about Charley, instead of

me.

46

Indian in me, too, I'm so relentless "he also said Pocahontas was a greasy Indian who never took a bath unless John Smith made her."

"I really must ask to be excused," was Aunt Abelina's comeback, and she and Mother Wilkstone went up-stairs in a terrible huff.

Even Adelaide was mad at me, but I escaped with a feeling of having done a noble thing for a friend.

Poor Jerry didn't look at it that way at all, however. When I saw him next day he was all packed up for a swing around the circle, and he carried a harassed look along with his baggage. The poor fellow's only chance to break

."-Page 81.

any more. I beg of you as a friend on bended knees-don't do it any more. You got me deeper in Dutch than Rotterdam."

"You don't mean they took it out on you?"

"Wow! The lectures I got on having low-brow friends! George, why can't you be refined? If I ever have you out to the house again I'll have to spend the rest of my life swinging around the circle, that's all!"

"Sure I'm a low-brow!" I'm always glad to admit that semi-soft impeachment. "But I didn't mean to get you in trouble, Jerry, honest I didn't. I just figured you were leading a dog's life,

anyway, and a couple additional fleas wouldn't bother. Guess there's no way I can help you, if those remarks didn't work."

"No way." George shook his head sadly. "There's just a few things money won't buy, and one of 'em's ancestors." “Rats,” I assured him. "Nobody in this country's got any ancestors to rave about, yet these people keep you feeling low as a lizard's knuckles. What did the first settlers come to this country for, anyway? Because they were poor Britishers who couldn't make a living in England, mostly. The aristocrats stayed home and raked in the profits from the land the king gave them, didn't they? Where do they get this ancestor stuff, anyway? The only true aristocracy, Jerry, is the aristocracy of brains-that's what you and I belong to!"

"Cheers, cheers," conceded Jerry, weakly. "But that doesn't get me any crest with three ostrich feathers in it, and Uncle William Slocum's writing a book about the family, and I've got to make a showing in it."

"Uncle William-who's he?" This was one descendant I hadn't met yet.

“Oh, he's one of the Sumter-SlocumWilkstones. Got lots of time and money and a sense of humor, too, I guess. He won't write 'memoirs,' because he says they're a sign of decadence, but he's decided to dig up all the facts about the family and send 'em down the ages bound in limp leather. The folks at home don't think much of Uncle William-they say he's the nearest thing to 'common' in the family, mainly because he's the only one with common sense, I think. The old fellow likes me pretty well, but he can't write me up unless I give him something to say, can he?"

"Well, Jerry, how much do you want to talk about, anyway? Don't you own the lion's majority of seven hotels?"

"Yes, but that won't count. It's got to be something my ancestors did." Hard to beat, not?

Just because his ancestors were nice peaceable folks who didn't make a name in history by swatting people over the head with broad-axes and stealing their land, Jerry had to take all this back-talk. I, for one, couldn't stand it any longer.

"Jerry, when you get back from that rope of hotels of yours, you're going to have a family tree," I promised.

"What do you mean?" I could see, right off, Jerry was afraid I was going to do something rash again.

"It's all right, don't worry. I'm going to trace you back to the King of Ireland, if necessary."

"Ireland hasn't got any king," Jerry demurred.

"Maybe it hasn't now, but it had, and his name was something like O'Brien. Just wait. We'll show these pikers something classier than William the Slugger." "All right, only for Pete's sake be careful," Jerry begged.

Well, sir, it took me a week and six bobbed-haired librarians to dig up the dirt of ages, but we got results.

I found out one thing-most family trees are a lot of optimistic guesswork. There'd be a fellow named Charles Augustus Mincemeat, for instance, who claimed kinship with a string of families decorating the dust back to Edward the Confessor, with the names of Mincemete, Minsmat, Minnymoot, Mingecoop; and finally, by a running broad jump of the imagination, Charles Augustus would say the name was Minge de Metravaille, before his noble ancestors left France in the tenth century and settled in England. Of course, inasmuch as Louis Etienne Arthur Henri Georges Jean François Auguste Edouard Saint Remy, duc du Minge de Metravaille, was a great-great left-handed grandson of Louis the First of France, everybody in the Mincemeat family could use the Metravaille crest with the two prairie-chickens pecking at the Swiss cheese, or whatever it was they were pecking at.

When it came to a question of spelling the name wrong, I found the O'Brien family had it over the Mincemeats like a circus tent over a microbe.

O'Brian, O'Brann, O'Brawn, O'BronBrian-Brynn-Brann-Bron, without the O- and finally there was a nest of them just named "Brr!" The O'Grady family originated, I think, with a nobleman who had an Irish setter that constantly said "Grr!"

Along with my night-school course in pedigrology, of course, I had to learn a

Personally, on the crest subject, I was in favor of a couple of Kilkenny cats surprised in the act of eating each other up, and for a motto I was going to get some good Gaelic scholar to translate into the original raw-material Irish the wellknown and stirring expression, "Ireland forever at it."

But the old gentleman in the Department of Archives and History vetoed that. His name was Professor Haralby, and he was recommended to me as a mighty fine fellow to enlist in a cause of this kind, because he personally had traced his family back to Harold Fairhair. "There is no doubt of your friend's aristocratic lineage," said the professor, after I had worked on his sympathy with filet mignon and flattery at Jerry's local hotel, and had also let fall a suggestion

century. There was almost a king for every county, as now constituted."

"That's the stuff-King O'Brien, of County Cork!"

"No, I should say Donald O'Brien, King of Thomond, who was one of the last native kings in Ireland, is the most recent royal progenitor of the famous O'Brien family. He it was who was visited by King Henry II on the latter's initial excursion to Ireland."

"Fine," I applauded, for the professor certainly knew his stuff. "You don't suppose you could find me a family tree, too, while you're about it? Any MacDougalls in the Irish king list?"

Professor Haralby flashed me a scholarly smile over his truffles.

"The MacDougall family has quite an interesting origin," he replied. "The