Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and tactical
understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral bell
some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome's money
in a state of high commotion. But at this point complications must be
introduced.

Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a
brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody else's
fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had a letter
from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that smelled
of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic and the
spelling St. Vitusy.

It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and
deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the
enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging
out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to
check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one
daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East,
charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and
cherish for the rest of her natural life or until matrimony should them
part.

Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is supported
by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail-fence; and
that the rail-fence is built on a turtle's back. Now, the turtle has
to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like old
Jerome.

I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so,