Explore "Doctor Grimshawe's Secret" by Nathaniel Hawthorne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
After lunch, the Warden showed a good degree of kind anxiety about his guest, and ensconced him in a most comfortable chair in his study, where he gave him his choice of books old and new, and was somewhat surprised, as well as amused, to see that Redclyffe seemed most attracted towards a department of the library filled with books of English antiquities, and genealogies, and heraldry; the two latter, indeed, having the preference over the others.
"This is very remarkable," said he, smiling. "By what right or reason, by what logic of character, can you, a democrat, renouncing all advantages of birth, -- neither priding yourself on family, nor seeking to found one, -- how therefore can you care for genealogies, or for this fantastic science of heraldry? Having no antiquities, being a people just made, how can you care for them?"