Ancestral people do not, as a rule, appreciate wit; but, on the other hand, it must be admitted that this is not a defect peculiar to them alone.  I once knew a man of letters who, though he had risen to wealth and eminence, was of humble descent, and had a weakness for avoiding allusion to it.  His daughter married a man of good birth, but whose literary talents were not of a high order.  This gentleman wrote a letter applying for a certain Government appointment, and expressed a wish for his father-in-law’s opinion upon the composition.  ’It’s a very bad letter,’ was the frank criticism the other made upon it.  ’The writing is bad, the spelling is indifferent, the style is abominable.  Good heavens! where are your relatives and antecedents?’ ’If it comes to that,’ was the reply, ’where are yours?  For I never hear you speak about them.’  Nor did he ever hear him, for his father-in-law never spoke another word to him.

Nothing, of course, can be more contemptible than to neglect one’s poor relations on account of their poverty; but it is very doubtful whether the sum of human happiness is increased by our having so much respect for the mere tie of kindred, unaccompanied by merit.  Other things being equal, it is obviously natural that one’s near relatives should be the best of friends.  But other things are not always equal.  Indeed, a certain high authority (which looks on both sides of most questions) admits as much.  ‘There is a friend,’ it says, ’that sticketh closer than a brother.  The connection, with its consequences, is somewhat similar to a partnership in commercial life.  If partners pull together, and are sympathetic, nothing can be more delightful than such an arrangement.  The tie of business clenches the tie of social attraction.  For myself, I am not commercial; but I envy the old firm of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the modern one of Erckmann and Chatrian.  But if the members of the firm do not pull together?  Then, surely the bond between them is most deplorable, and a divorce a vinculo should be obtained as soon as possible.

One of the greatest mistakes—­and there are many—­that we fall into from a too ready acknowledgment of the tie of kindred is the obligation we feel under to consort with relations with whom we have nothing in common.  You may take such persons to the waters of affection, but you cannot make them drink; and the more you see of them the less they are likely to agree with you.  Not once, nor twice, but fifty times, in a life experience that is becoming protracted, I have seen this forcible bringing together of incongruous elements, and the result has been always unfortunate.  I say ‘forcible,’ because it has been rarely voluntary; now and then a strong, though, I venture to think, a mistaken sense of duty may lead a man to seek the society of one with whom he has nothing in common save the bond of race; but for the most part they are obeying the wishes of another—­the sacred injunction, perhaps, of a parent on his death-bed.