How little are we able to foresee the ultimate result of apparently trifling actions! A pebble, a twig, may decide whether a given rain-drop shall reach the ocean through the waters of the Mississippi or of the Oregon. A little sketch had led to my banishment from Reva: an acquaintance, made in the most casual way, led to—Well, that will all come in due time.
Among other pleasant acquaintances made at the house of the scientist already adverted to, was that of an eminent authority on genealogy. A genealogist in that period, it must be well understood, was no blind groper amid the scanty records of a misty past, no framer, to order, of well-paid-for pedigrees. Genealogy was a science. Just as, among us, a scientific botanist can assign a place and name to each individual of the hundreds of thousands of species of plants on the face of the earth; so a genealogist, given the few data that each person was supposed to carry in memory, could assign to that person his exact place in the great family tree of the race.
Each family, at this time, could trace back its descent
