drank himself to death in as short a time as that agreeable result could be compassed; he was not the first nor the last of the family to make thus the easy Avernian descent. I have heard some of the Gwynnes themselves comment upon the familiar fate and character of great men's sons, as exemplified by Governor Gwynne's with a kind of melancholy complacence.[1] The Governor left a queer, unjust, and wrong-headed will--realising, perhaps, how queer, unjust, and wrong-headed were some of his prospective heirs--tying up a part of his property to the third generation, devising what seemed an unfair proportion to his brothers and sisters, of whom it might be said that their name was legion--Lucien Gwynne, David Gwynne, Charlotte, Eleanor, Marian; I have never known anyone who could accurately catalogue all the Gwynnes--and bequeathing the house and furniture to all his children in succession, as if he had a premonition that none of them would enjoy it long. There was a son who had run away to sea and was never heard of again; no provision was made for him in case he should reappear, although he was the oldest. Then came Sam, that died in a fit of delirium tremens; then Arthur. Him they found hanging to a beam under the "Attic" roof one summer morning not long after he had succeeded to the kingdom of the Gwynnes; and I suppose there was a horrid silence in the attic, and presently wild, pale-faced women and running and hurry and horses' hoofs churning the gravel before the door. The body was laid in the same south parlour and Governor Gwynne stared over his scroll at the suicide. Arthur left two daughters, young women grown; by the time I put on long dresses they were two old maids and lived narrowly, doing their own work, in a little cheap house at the other end of town. They were always clad alike in the last bombazine that was ever seen among us, I am sure, and wore their hair in the ringlets of eighteen-sixty, with knobs of black satin ribbon at the temples. They had the name of being queer, but then all the Gwynnes were queer.