When the editor of the "Vade Mecum" wished to impress on his subscribers the necessity of settling their accounts, he prefaced his remarks with this statement: "We are a homogeneous people. We are united. What is the interest of one is the interest of all. We must continue to preserve our harmony."
But envy knows no race or clime, and it had taken up its abode among the cousins of Rockville. It was not even rooted out by the disastrous results of the war, which tended to bring each and every cousin down to the same level of hopeless poverty. When, therefore, Colonel Asbury announced in the streets that his wife had concluded to take boarders, and caused to be inserted in the "Vade Mecum" a notice to the effect that "a few select parties" could find accommodations at The Cedars, there were a good many smothered exclamations of affected surprise among the cousins, with no little secret satisfaction that "Cousin Becky T." had at last been compelled to "get off her high horse,"—to employ the vernacular of Rockville.
Such an announcement was certainly the next thing to a crash in the social fabric, and while some of the cousins were secretly
