It always seemed to me that Aunt Millie was overstocked with the things that uncle lacked--will-power, assertiveness, and electric temper. She was positively positive in every part of her nature. She was positive that “Rule Britannia” should come next after “Nearer, my God, to Thee!” She was likewise positive as to the validity of her own ideas. Her mind, once made up--it did not take very long for that--was inflexible. The English landed nobility never had a more worshipful worshiper than my aunt. She was positive that it was one of our chief duties to “know our place,” and “not try to be gentlemen and ladies when we don’t have the right to be such.” “It’s no use passing yourself off as middle-classers if you arn’t middle-classers and why should, on the other hand, a middle-classer try to pose as a gentleman?” She was always reciting to me, as one of the pleasant memories she had carried off from her girlhood, how, when the carriage of a squire had swept by, she had courtesied graciously and humbly. “Did they bow to you, Aunt?” I asked. “Bow to me!” she exclaimed, contemptuously, “who ever heard the likes!” Once she had seen a _real_ lord! Her father had been one of those hamlet geniuses whose dreams and plans never get much broader recognition than his own fireside. He had built church organs, played on them, and had composed music. He had also made the family blacking, soap, ink, and many other useful necessities. He had also manufactured the pills with which the family cured its ills, pills of the old-fashioned sort of soap, sugar, and herb, compounded. Once he had composed some music for his church’s share in a national fête, on the merit of which, my aunt used to fondly tell me, _real_ gentlemen would drive up to the door merely to have a glimpse at the old gentleman, much as if he had been Mendelssohn in retirement. Aunt sent me daily to one or other of the public-houses for either a jug of ale or a pint of porter. Sometimes she took more than a perfunctory jug, and then she was on edge for a row instantly. When intoxicated she fairly quivered with jealousy, suspicion, and violent passion. One question touching on a delicate matter, one word injudiciously placed, one look of the eye, and she became a volcano of belligerent rage, belching profanity, and letting crockery or pieces of coal express what even her overloaded adjectives could not adequately convey. And when the storm had spent itself, she always relapsed into an excessive hysteria, which included thrillingly mad shrieks, which my poor, inoffensive uncle tried to drown in showers of cold water. “I’ve brought it all on myself,” explained Uncle Stanwood, in explanation of his wife’s intoxication. He then went on to explain how, when he had been courting, he had taken his fiancée on a holiday trip to the seaside. While there, in a beer-garden, he had pressed her to drink a small glass of brandy. “It all started from that,” he concluded. “God help me!”