2io My Neighbor's Wood-Shed 



Better turn the lid of an old desk into a 

 bracket or wall-pocket than reduce it to 

 ashes. But let it be your own people's 

 furniture. Better admit that you had no 

 grandmother than palm off some stranger's 

 rocking-chair as an heirloom. The real 

 heir may turn up some day and his presence 

 lead to your confusion. The same little 

 spinning-wheel has bolstered a bogus ances- 

 tral toss of the head in more than one parlor 

 in the last decade, and what a row was 

 there when I announced that the successive 

 owners were gilded nobodies ! I barely 

 escaped the assassination that perhaps my 

 foolhardiness deserved. I know whereof I 

 speak when I say that the oldest grand- 

 father's clock, according to its owner's ac- 

 count, was lying as ore in the bowels of the 

 earth and as a walnut-tree grew in the forest 

 not fifty years ago. I happen to hold the 

 documents that reveal that boastful man's 

 ancestral history. To take an interest in 

 one's family history is well enough, but 

 beware of the pride that it engenders if you 

 can go back a few centuries. It creates 

 envy, too, and many a heart-burning in 

 others who cannot trace their forebears, as 



