hurt; but he answered with dignity:

"I have. I say it without shame--I feel none. And now my reason for

resolving to renounce my heirship without resistance is explained.

I wish to retire from what to me is a false existence, a false position,

and begin my life over again--begin it right--begin it on the level of

mere manhood, unassisted by factitious aids, and succeed or fail by pure

merit or the want of it. I will go to America, where all men are equal

and all have an equal chance; I will live or die, sink or swim, win or

lose as just a man--that alone, and not a single helping gaud or fiction

back of it."

Hear, hear!" The two men looked each other steadily in the eye a moment

or two, then the elder one added, musingly, "Ab-so-lutely

cra-zy-ab-solutely!" After another silence, he said, as one who, long

troubled by clouds, detects a ray of sunshine, "Well, there will be one

satisfaction--Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own, and I

will drown him in the horsepond. That poor devil--always so humble in

his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our

great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for

recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood

-and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to

raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the

lewd American scum around him--ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable

tramp! To read one of his cringing, nauseating letters--well?"

The American Claimant