When one belongs to a great family he can not live entirely for
himself. His disgrace or failure reflects not alone on his own
reputation, but it sullies the fair fame of men long dead and buried;
and this is a dreadful thing. For all these old Puritans and Cavaliers,
these knights and barons, these king's councillors and scholars, have
perchance lived out the long years of their lives with all good intent
and purpose and with all earnestness of execution, merely that they
might build and send down to posterity this same fair fame. It is a
bold man, or a wicked man, who will dare lightly to bring the efforts
of so many lives to naught! In the thought of these centuries of
endeavour, the sacrifice of mere personal happiness does not seem so
great an affair after all. The Family Name has taken to itself a soul.
It is a living thing. It may be worked for, it may be nourished by
affection, it may even be worshipped. Men may give their lives to it
with as great a devotion, with as exalted a sense of renunciation, and
as lofty a joy in that renunciation, as those who vow allegiance to St.
Francis or St. Dominic.
Pages:
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174