"Look a here, cousin Jase," sez I, "what on arth do you want to make out that we Slick's are anything but jest what we be, for aint it a darned sight more to our credit, Yankees as we are, and Republicans as we ought to be, to own it at once, that we had to hoe our own row up, and found it a purty tough one? Now you know well enough, for all your crouchongs, and lions, and roosters,--that you've picked up, lord-a-massey knows where--that you begun life, or any how begun to save up chink, fust by a horse cart on Peck Slip, and that wife of your'n went out a nussing other folk's children till arter you married her, and that aint no disgrace to her nor you neither, so long as you don't try to make out that you're something more than you raly be. It is too bad you're trying to make out that you're a English big bug, when you can prove yourself as good a nobleman as ever lived, by going back to our grand-par, the brave old shoemaker, that swung his lap-stone over his shoulder when the Revolution broke out, and jined the patriots when their struggle was dark as the grave. The old man never gave way once, but fought like a lion when fighting was to be done. He clung to his companions in good and bad luck, and though he fought, and marched, and suffered with the toughest of 'em, never once gin out or got discouraged, but arter a long day's march would unsling his lap-stone, take out his rusty tools, and hammer and stitch away half the night long, to make up shoes for his tired and sore footed feller soldiers, whenever he could find a scrap of sole leather or a piece of cow skin to make up!" I was a going on, but Lord Morpeth he got up, and sez he, "Let us drink to the memory of Mr. Slick's ancestor, the 'brave Shoemaker.'" Jase looked sort of ugly about what I'd said--but I couldn't help that, and when Lord Morpeth jined in, the hull biling on us got up, and another squad of wine glasses was put into action. When the rest had sot down, I felt as if I couldn't break off so, but I thought it wouldn't do no harm to give 'em a short specimen of Weathersfied chin music, seeing as there was a lord to hear me. "Now," sez I, "it's of no use denying that we Yankees do think a good deal of noble birth and pure blood, and all of them ere things that the English have boosted up their throne with so many hundred years; for my part, I du feel a kind of love and reverence for a family of any kind, whose blood has run pure from one generation to another, through brave men and good women, till it beats full of warm ginerous human natur in the heart of a true nobleman, whether he has a title or not. It gives a man something to be proud of, something to guard and keep himself good and honorable for. A man must be mean as pusley, and meaner yet, who could do a small action while he knew that his blood had been kept, pure as spring water, by a hull line of good men, all a sleeping in their graves."