Had the Mesuriers possessed a coat-of-arms, James Mesurier would probably have kept it locked up as a frivolity to be ashamed of, for it was a part of his Puritanism that such earthly distinctions were foolishness with God; but, as a matter of fact, between Adam and the immediate great-grandparents of the young Mesuriers, there was a void which the Herald's office would have found a difficulty in filling.

This it never occurred to them to mind in the least.
It was one of Henry's deep-sunken maxims that "a distinguished product implied a distinguished process," and that, at all events, the genealogical process was only illustratively important.

It would have been interesting to know how they, the Mesuriers, came to be what they were.

In the dark night of their history a family portrait or two, or an occasional reference in history, would have been an entertaining illumination--but, such not being forthcoming, they were, documentally, so much the less indebted to their progenitors.

Yet if they had only been able to claim some ancestor with a wig and a degree for the humanities, or some beautiful ancestress with a romantic reputation! One's own present is so much more interesting for developing, or even repeating, some one else's past.