Excerpt from Genealogy in the Library Although strange cases are not as numer ous as they once were, they do occasionally appear, and sometimes they amount almost to insanity. A woman called on me one day in great haste for a certified copy of some document which I could not find to exist. She said that it was the last link in her chain of evidence to prove her claim to an est-ate in England, her share of which was to be eighty million dollars. Finally she found something else which she said would do just as well; but the ...
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Excerpt from Genealogy in the Library Although strange cases are not as numer ous as they once were, they do occasionally appear, and sometimes they amount almost to insanity. A woman called on me one day in great haste for a certified copy of some document which I could not find to exist. She said that it was the last link in her chain of evidence to prove her claim to an est-ate in England, her share of which was to be eighty million dollars. Finally she found something else which she said would do just as well; but the office of the Secretary of Stat-e was closed, and the copy must be certified somehow, so, to please her, I attached the certificate of a notary public, stamped it with my seal, and she went away perfectly satisfied. And I have got to wait for my notary's fee until she gets her eighty millions. Mr. Collins, bod-carrier, came in another day, and wanted some book that would tell him about the early kings of Ireland. Mr. Collins is one of the very few unconsciously funny Irishmen that I have ever known. He told the tale that once upon a time the kings of Ireland claimed title to the soil of Denmark, but they did not possess the land. Nevertheless, in assertion of their title, it was customary to best-ow portions of that country as wedding gifts on their sons and daughters, in the full belief that some day they would again come into actual possession. They till me I am of ryal b-lude, said Mr. Collins, and. He wanted to find his piece of Denmark. These are extraordinary cases, and not to be looked for in our every-day library work. But, perhaps, some day a portly, positive woman will come in and say, I want to find the Revolutionary record of my great-grandfather. He was a colonel in the Revolution. You find no mention ofany such colonel in the Revolutionary rolls, but you may find a corporal or a private of the name she gives you; and you ask How do you know he was a colonel? Where did you find your authority? She immediately bristles up and replies: Why, we have always been told in our family, right straight down, that he was a colonel. My father told me so when he was ninety eight years old, and I guess he wouldn't lie. And we know it is so, anyway, because we have got his gun. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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