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- IV.
In general terms we have been thus decided in asserting the great
genealogical and real-estate dignity of some families in America,
because in so doing we poetically establish the richly aristocratic
condition of Master Pierre Glendinning, for whom we have before claimed
some special family distinction. And to the observant reader the sequel
will not fail to show, how important is this circumstance, considered
with reference to the singularly developed character and most singular
life-career of our hero. Nor will any man dream that the last chapter
was merely intended for a foolish bravado, and not with a solid purpose
in view.
Now Pierre stands on this noble pedestal; we shall see if he keeps that
fine footing; we shall see if Fate hath not just a little bit of a small
word or two to say in this world. But it is not laid down here that the
Glendinnings dated back beyond Pharaoh, or the deeds of Saddle-Meadows
to the Three Magi in the Gospels. Nevertheless, those deeds, as before
hinted, did indeed date back to three kings--Indian kings--only so much
the finer for that.
But if Pierre did not date back to the Pharaohs, and if the English
farmer Hampdens were somewhat the seniors of even the oldest
Glendinning; and if some American manors boasted a few additional years
and square miles over his, yet think you that it is at all possible,
that a youth of nineteen should--merely by way of trial of the
thing--strew his ancestral kitchen hearth-stone with wheat in the stalk,
and there standing in the chimney thresh out that grain with a flail,
whose aerial evolutions had free play among all that masonry; were it
not impossible for such a flailer so to thresh wheat in his own
ancestral kitchen chimney without feeling just a little twinge or two of
what one might call family pride? I should say not.
Or how think you it would be with this youthful Pierre, if every day
descending to breakfast, he caught sight of an old tattered British
banner or two, hanging over an arched window in his hall; and those
banners captured by his grandfather, the general, in fair fight? Or how
think you it would be if every time he heard the band of the military
company of the village, he should distinctly recognize the peculiar tap
of a British kettle-drum also captured by his grandfather in fair fight,
and afterwards suitably inscribed on the brass and bestowed upon the
Saddle-Meadows Artillery Corps? Or how think you it would be, if
sometimes of a mild meditative Fourth of July morning in the country, he
carried out with him into the garden by way of ceremonial cane, a long,
majestic, silver-tipped staff, a Major-General's baton, once wielded on
the plume-nodding and musket-flashing review by the same grandfather
several times here-in-before mentioned? I should say that considering
Pierre was quite young and very unphilosophical as yet, and withal
rather high-blooded; and sometimes read the History of the Revolutionary
War, and possessed a mother who very frequently made remote social
allusions to the epaulettes of the Major-General his grandfather;--I
should say that upon all of these occasions, the way it must have been
with him, was a very proud, elated sort of way. And if this seem but too
fond and foolish in Pierre; and if you tell me that this sort of thing
in him showed him no sterling Democrat, and that a truly noble man
should never brag of any arm but his own; then I beg you to consider
again that this Pierre was but a youngster as yet. And believe me you
will pronounce Pierre a thoroughgoing Democrat in time; perhaps a little
too Radical altogether to your fancy.
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