I had learned,
too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all
time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring
branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct
line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary
variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while
running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the
premises with the accredited character of the people, and while
speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long
lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other --it was
this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent
undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with
the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge
the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal
appellation of the "House of Usher" --an appellation which seemed to
include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family
and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish
experiment --that of looking down within the tarn --had been to deepen
the first singular impression.
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