In The First Place, I Didn't Want To Have Anything To Do With My Father's Name.

I never had anything much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and

His name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the romantic.

She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the family name.

"Dork," said he; "a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father the eldest son of a family of that name?"

Now I was hoping he wouldn't say anything about my father.

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