Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/46



The Taylors of Taylor's Mill were not aristocrats, according to the Virginia ideas of aristocracy. The ladies of the family could not have joined the Society of Colonial Dames because of any distinction an original Taylor may have won, nor could they have aspired to the through paternal lines, unless having ground corn for George Washington's hoe-cakes would have made them eligible to that patriotic society.

The Taylors prided themselves on not being aristocrats. At least it was a habit of the men of the family to mention it rather often—but it was a well-known fact that they had made it a rule to marry aristocrats. They had been doing it for generations. Enough blood of the princely Cavaliers had been fused into the Taylor stock to bring its average up to aristocratic par; but the present head of the family, Major Robert Taylor, carried on the Taylor traditions by insisting he was not an aristocrat.

"Just millers!" he would assert. "Nothing