158 ANCESTRY 



takes down a certain light blue book, entitled Society As I 

 Have Found It, reads a page or two, and then contem- 

 plates this outcome of what some people consider all 

 that is choicest, may he not truly rejoice that his life's 

 ticket is numbered in the thousands and not within 

 four hundred ? Did not the genial Autocrat say some- 

 thing- anent the clergymen and doctors — the Brahmins 

 — of New England being good enough ancestry for any 

 one ? And is not a pedigree honestly traced back to the 

 brave men who landed at Plymouth Rock better than a 

 coat of arms got up by a heraldry expert (!) for some 

 nouveau riche who doesn't know who was his great- 

 grandfather ? I for one am proud that ray grandfather 

 was pastor of First Church, Haverhill, and that my 

 great-grandfather was one of the heroes of Bunker Hill ; 

 but I would give more to-day for old Seth Pomeroy's 

 anvil, or the vice which clamped the muskets he repaired 

 for the Massachusetts militia, than for the sword he 

 wore as a colonel in the French wars. The Dodge who 

 landed with the Salem company in 1G29 is a forebear 

 who satisfies all my ambition for ancestry. If we 

 Americans cease to be proud of the thew and sinew of 

 our forefathers, of the soil and the laws which have 

 brought forth such a man as Abraham Lincoln and made 

 him President of the Republic, what have we left ? Are 

 we to become a plutocracy pure and simple ? 



