"You are right. I do not like him as he is, but only as he is to be. I saw what you feared I did, and marked it. I saw him knock down the boy whom he had condescended to make his playmate in default of better, for taking too much in earnest the accorded equality. But I saw, too, that his own breast was sorer with the blow than the one it hit. That is not always a cruel discipline which teaches a man early what he is capable of, whether in good or evil. When your Reginald comes to the responsible age, his conscience will hand in the account of his minority. Looking, then, on this item and on others like it, he will ask himself, 'Am I a dog that I have done these things?' and he will become a man, and a good one. "We see farcical pretensions enough down here, where men are daily new-created from the mud. There is Milsom. He does not own even the name he wears. His father borrowed it for a time, and, having worn it out, left it with this son, decamping under shelter of a new one. The son, abandoned to his wits at twelve years old, relieved his father from the charge of inhumanity by proving them sufficient. His first exploit was the betraying of a fugitive who had shared a crust with him. This success revealed to him his proper road to fortune. He passed through the regular degrees of slave-catcher and slave-trader, to the proud altitude of slave-holder; then, moving out of the reach of old associations, proclaims himself a gentleman by descent as well as by desert. His sons take it on his word; in all simplicity believe themselves an integral part of time-honored aristocracy, and think it beneath them to do anything but mischief. "Your claims I neither blame nor make light of. I know what their foundation is better than you do yourself. Only dismiss illusions, and accept realities, which do not yield to them even in charm to the imagination. When you know the ground under your feet, you will stand more quietly as well as more firmly. You will understand then that the silence of the New-Englander in regard to his extraction is not indifference, but security. Nowhere is the memory of ancestry so sacredly cherished as in New England, nowhere so humbly. What are we in presence of those majestic memories? We may lead our happy humdrum lives; may fulfil creditably our easy duties; we may plant and build and legislate for those who come after us; but it will still be to these great primitive figures that our descendants will look back; it will still be the debt owed there that will pledge the living generation to posterity.