Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/26

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MY FATHER AND MOTHER
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deira from John and Charles March, New York, was rolled in every fall, and my father and my uncle Robert, another son of Anak (for they were both six feet four), used to attend to the bottling of this, then daily used, fine wine. I never drank any of it, but I have the ichor of it in my veins to-day, innocent as I am, in the shape of rheumatism. "My grandfather left me the gout, without any cellar of wine to keep it up on," said James Russell Lowell, and I might say the same. My father was lawyer, politician, and military man. I never heard him addressed by any lesser title than Captain, and he was a captain of thousands for fifty years; after that he was called General, as his father was called the "old Squire" all his life, a tribute to the customs of the Old World which I have always remembered with pleasure.

James "Wilson, my grandfather, I remember as a handsome and distinguished figure. He was exceedingly fond of dress, and never walked up the street but in a full-dress suit, with a ruffled shirt and white cravat. In the ruffle was placed a topaz pin surrounded by pearls. In his fine, well-kept hand was a gold-headed cane, and his feet were in polished shoes; he looked the rich and respected citizen.

"There goes the old Squire, as vain as a peacock," I overheard a working-man say one day. But I was very much afraid of this vision of old-time elegance, for he did not like to see me romping along the street, and once addressed me in this terrible manner: "Mary Elizabeth, I am very sorry to see a pupil of Miss Fiske's school, and my granddaughter, dancing on the public highway." I did stop dancing until after his dear back was turned, but hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue. I kept on dancing for many years, street