The Jest Of Ancestry


LORD CHESTERFIELD placed among the portraits of his ancestors two old

heads, inscribed Adam de Stanhope, and Eve de Stanhope: the ridicule is

admirable.



Old Peter Leneve, the herald, who thought ridicule consisted in not

being of an old family, made this epitaph for young Craggs, whose father

had been a footman: Here lies the last who died before the first of his

family! Old Craggs was one day getting into a coach with Arthur Moore,

who had worn a livery too, when he turned about, and said, Why, Arthur,

I am always going to get up behind; are not you?



The Gordons trace their name no farther back than the days of Alexander

the Great, from Gordonia, a city of Macedon, which, they say, once

formed part of Alexander's dominions, and, from thence, no doubt, the

clan must have come!



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