Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/247

 him only Freddie Selfie, the proper family and baptismal designation was Frederick Adolphus Constantine Maximilian Ferdinand Alphonso Nicholas Wilhelmus Napoleon Cæsar Augustus Tiberius Selphnil.

The great Selphnil family had been more conspicuous in these modern than in more ancient times. There were not so many Selphnils in feudal days. In tracing back the particular family line now in question, some trader or banker turns up with a deal of money; but the family in after times do not dwell overmuch upon this fundamental personage. It little matters, to be sure, whether his name was Brown, Jones, or Robinson, seeing his descendants changed it, when, at an early stage, they married into the Selphnils, and took their name. These Selphnils, after that accession, with large and entailed estates, became a great and flourishing family. They could proudly boast that Selphnils were to be abundantly met with throughout even the very highest ranks.

The staff and stay of Selphnil greatness was "the family." The mere individual personality disappeared. Apart from his family and his nobility, as the first duke gloried in saying, he himself was nothing. The family fortunes were at their height with this first Duke of Selphnil. There had previously been in succession, Baron, Viscount, Earl, and Marquis Selphnil. The great life's aim of the baron had been to be viscount, of the viscount to be earl, of the earl to be marquis, and now, from a marquis, the family ambition, with its traditional instincts, turns to the dukedom.

But the path, even to such honours, in these com-