ANCESTRY

ANCESTRY
A western buyer is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his ancestors affixed his name to the Declaration of Independence. At the time the salesman called, the buyer was signing a number of checks and affixed his signature with many a curve and flourish. The salesman's patience becoming exhausted in waiting for the buyer to recognize him, he finally observed:
"You have a fine signature, Mr. So-and-So."
"Yes," admitted the buyer, "I should have. One of my forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence."
"So?" said the caller, with rising inflection. And then he added:
"Vell, you aind't got nottings on me. One of my forefathers signed the Ten Commandments."

In a speech in the Senate on Hawaiian affairs, Senator Depew of New York told this story:
When Queen Liliuokalani was in England during the English queen's jubilee, she was received at Buckingham Palace. In the course of the remarks that passed between the two queens, the one from the Sandwich Islands said that she had English blood in her veins.
"How so?" inquired Victoria.
"My ancestors ate Captain Cook."

Signor Marconi, in an interview in Washington, praised American democracy.
"Over here," he said, "you respect a man for what he is himself—not for what his family is—and thus you remind me of the gardener in Bologna who helped me with my first wireless apparatus.
"As my mother's gardener and I were working on my apparatus together a young count joined us one day, and while he watched us work the count boasted of his lineage.
"The gardener, after listening a long while, smiled and said:
"'If you come from an ancient family, it's so much the worse for you sir; for, as we gardeners say, the older the seed the worse the crop.'"

"Gerald," said the young wife, noticing how heartily he was eating, "do I cook as well as your mother did?"
Gerald put up his monocle, and stared at her through it.
"Once and for all, Agatha," he said, "I beg you will remember that although I may seem to be in reduced circumstances now, I come of an old and distinguished family. My mother was not a cook."

"My ancestors came over in the 'Mayflower.'"
"That's nothing; my father descended from an aëroplane."—Life.

When in England, Governor Foss, of Massachusetts, had luncheon with a prominent Englishman noted for boasting of his ancestry. Taking a coin from his pocket, the Englishman said: "My great-great-grandfather was made a lord by the king whose picture you see on this shilling." "Indeed!" replied the governor, smiling, as he produced another coin. "What a coincidence! My great-great-grandfather was made an angel by the Indian whose picture you see on this cent."

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.—Burke.

From yon blue heavens above us bent,
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
—Tennyson.