Toward the middle of the eighteenth century three younger scions of the Manor of Durham migrated from the County of Durham to Virginia and thence branched out into Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri.
His mother was the loveliest old aristocrat with a taking drawl, a drawl that was high-bred and patrician, not rustic and plebeian, which her famous son inherited.

All the women of that ilk were gentlewomen.

The literary and artistic instinct which attained its fruition in him had percolated through the veins of a long line of silent singers, of poets and painters, unborn to the world of expression till he arrived upon the scene.
These joint cousins of ours embraced an exceedingly large, varied and picturesque assortment.

Their idiosyncrasies were a constant source of amusement to us.

Just after the successful production of his play, The Gilded Age, and the uproarious hit of the comedian, Raymond, in the leading role, I received a letter from him in which he told me he had made in Colonel Mulberry Sellers a close study of one of these kinsmen and thought he had drawn him to the life.