"Well, and how did you enjoy our excellent friends, the Parrs?" Cardington queried, leaning back in his chair with an expectant twinkle in his eyes. "I felt that I was visiting a storage warehouse filled with old furniture, in the midst of which stood Parr like a wax figure escaped from the Eden Musee." "I can well understand that," Cardington commented, with a chuckle. "And you learned something, doubtless, about the old newel-post that was taken from the Putney mansion, which I hope you admired adequately, about the old clock, the tables, and the chairs. You heard the respectable names also of the respectable Parrs' ancestors, and Mr. Parr asked you how you liked Warwick, after which he told you how he liked it himself." "Your astral body must have accompanied me," Leigh suggested. "I could report the conversation verbatim," Cardington declared. "She told you, among other things, that she was a genuine Bradford on her father's side, and uttered bulls of excommunication against pretenders to the honour. It would n't do, you know, to admit that the Bradford progeny is as numerous as the stars for multitude, and as the sands upon the seashore. It is advisable to restrict the genuine Bradfords to those of wealth and position. Now, this genealogical mania is a kind of midsummer madness that lasts in Warwick the year through, a lineal descendant, so to speak, of the witchcraft delusion; but it offers a certain kind of mental pemmican to impoverished minds. Those much vaunted ancestors were very worthy people, but, bless you! there was n't a social swell in the whole lot." "Out West one never hears of such things," said Leigh. "Out West," Cardington returned, "they are still grappling with the realities of life. Ancestor worship has not yet set in as a canker in the fruit; that will come with the dead ripeness. Here you see the New Englander as he is to-day, not as he was in a glorified past; not landing at Plymouth Rock, not hanging witches, or beating Quakers, or persecuting Episcopalians, not throwing tea into Boston Harbour, or writing philosophy at Concord, but spending his days in watching the gradual accretion of his already substantial fortune. "A New Englander is the only jewel that appears to better advantage out of its proper setting than in it. To illustrate. In the West, the New Englander is thawed without being melted to such an extent as to lose his backbone; he becomes genial without undue compromise; he carries the torch of civilisation without a flourish. It was the chosen spirits of New England, men and women, that went West in their great waggons with the pots and pans hanging from the axle, and salted that crude country with their quality. "But the conversation has become very oracular," he continued. "What are you going to do during the recess?" "I 'm going home, and shall stop over in New York for a visit on my way back. But where are you going?"