Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/249

 his importunate suitor, and perhaps for much the same reason as swayed his prototype. So the marquis became Duke of Selphnil.

But this Smith was, after all, an incurably vulgar fellow, as the following incident, in the duke's own experience and narrating, would show. A government berth had been resolved upon for a young cadet of the duke's family; and, of course, the youth's high connections were all duly arrayed in the duke's application on his behalf; so that he was run in, upon all this recommendatory category, as for assured victory. But what are the young man's own qualities? asked the busy premier, somewhat abruptly. The duke tartly rejoined that he thought he had already well answered that question. The applicant, to begin with, was a distant connection of his own, besides having other nobility relations on the paternal side, and even on the mother's side he was But just at this completing climax of the exposition, the case would appear to have broken down, between the highly impatient premier on the one hand, and the highly offended duke on the other. At any rate the latter then swore that he would plead for no more cadets before Premier Smith; and, indeed, having now secured his title, he had resolved to cut that person's further acquaintance.

The duke belonged to the Nowurke branch of the Selphnils. But the Nowurke Selphnils were quite distinct from another noble family, that simply of the Knowurkes, who were also spreading considerably about this time. The duke rather looked down upon this latter lot. The two names, he said, sounded alike, but the spelling detected the true quality.