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.

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