Fathers to unite them in holy wedlock to the maidens of their choice.
To many havens they sailed, and in every one they had an only wife.
They made their priests inscribe texts from the holy Gospel on pieces
of parchment made from the skin of hogs, and instead of robbing
people, as of yore, they paid with the word of Holy Scripture for the
booty they levied. This, they said, was infinitely more precious than
any worldly dross. All hail to the memory of my gallant maternal
ancestor, who, when surfeited with the caresses of his Fifine of
Normandy, flew to the arms of Mercedes of Andalusia. Next, perhaps,
he appeared in Greenland, blubbering with an Esquimau heiress. Anon,
you might have found him in Columbia in the tolls of a princely
Pocahontas. In Mexico he ate the ardent chile from the tender hand of
his Guadalupita, and later on he was on time at a five o'clock family
tea party in Japan, or he might have kotowed pidgin-love to a
trusting maid in a China town of fair Cathay. In Africa--oh,
horror!--here I draw the veil, for in my mind's eye I behold a burly
negro (yes, sah!) staring at me out of fishy, blue eyes. It is said
of these gallant rovers of the seas that they were subject to a
peculiar malady when on shore. It caused them to stagger and swagger,
use violent language, and deport themselves not unlike people who are
seized with mal de mer, or sickness of the sea. When attacked by this
failing, their wives would cast them bodily into the holds of their
ships and start them out to sea, where they soon recovered their
usual health and equilibrium and continued on their rounds. They were
the first of all commercial travelers and the hardiest, jolliest and
most prosperous--but they did not hoard their earnings.

My uncle conducted a store, selling merchandise of every description.
Dutch uncle though he was to me, I must give him thanks for the
careful business training he bestowed on me. I say with pride that I