ye see their heads bowing with shame and embarrassment, while your own brows are decorated with well-earned laurels.  Do ye not already enjoy the bliss of the prophetic vision, until the bursting in of the reality?  Ah, ye do!  Now think it not over-officious in your cousin of low capacity to assure you that your hopes are but the baseless fabrics of vain minds.  The day of examination will reveal to your astonished sensibilities that ye have dreamed the dream of fools.  Those noble young men, who are the objects of your hatred, will soar above you triumphantly, and their enemies will be covered over with shame.  Let me give you fair warning!  Ye are ignorant of the strength of those youths, over whom your vain imaginations appear to triumph with such ease.”

“Our forbearance, brother, I fear, only encourages the insolence of this, our ungrateful relative,” said Shagoth, in anger.  “How soon these upstarts forget their poverty when they are permitted to mingle in good society.”

“And how soon they forget the kind hands that lifted them up from their low estate!” answered Scribbo, casting a reproachful glance in the direction of Apgomer.

“Now, cousins,” said Apgomer, smilingly, “since these charges are thrown out against me, without going through the usual form of asking permission, I shall at once take the liberty of repelling them.

“In the first place, I am charged with being an ‘upstart,’ and of too soon forgetting my poverty.  This I deny.  I have, by no means, forgotten my own poverty, or the low condition of my ancestors.  Let us look at this for a moment.  Painful as it may be, I believe ye do occasionally admit that I am your cousin.  Well, then, be it remembered that I am your cousin.  Our fathers were brothers, and our grandfather was one and the same person.  It is well known to you that our respected grand-sire was an individual who had to plod his way along through the very steeps of poverty, and procure a little bread for his family by humble employments.  In poverty he lived, and in deep poverty he would have died, had it not been for the grateful regard of one of his sons; of the other, I have nothing to say at present.  Now to some, who have suddenly risen from poverty to a degree of affluence, it proves a source of deep mortification to remember that they sprang from a low origin.  But is this the case with your cousin Apgomer?  Have I forgotten the source whence I sprang?  Does it create a blush on this cheek to remember that my grandfather was poor, and that my father had to win his bread through the sweat of his brow?  Whoever has forgotten the poverty of his father and grandfather, be it known that Apgomer is not that youth.