im to looking about him. He soon discovered that in
our great republic everywhere there were living hundreds and thousands
of men and women who were utterly unaware that they were descended from
kings. Borrowing a little money to float him, he set up The American
Almanach de Gotha and began (for the minimum sum of fifty dollars
a pedigree) to reveal to these eager people the chain of links that
connected them with royalty. Thus, in a period of time the brevity of
which is incredible, this young man passed from complete indigence to
a wife and four automobiles, or an automobile and four wives--I don't
remember which he had the four of. There was so much royal blood about
that it had spilled into several rival organizations, each bitterly
warring with the other; but my Aunt assured me that her society was the
only one that any respectable person belonged to.

I am minded to announce a rule of discreet conduct: Never read aloud
any letter that you have not first read to yourself. Had I observed this
rule--but listen:--

It so happened that Aunt Carola was at luncheon with us when the postman
brought John Mayrant's answer to my inquiry, and at the sight of his
handwriting I thoughtlessly exclaimed to my Aunt that here at last we
had all there was to be known concerning the Bombos in South Carolina;
with this I tore open the missive and embarked upon a reading of it
for the edification of all present. I pass over the beginning of John's
communication, because it was merely the observations of a man upon
his honeymoon, and was confined to laudatory accounts of scenery and
weather, and the beauty of all life when once one saw it with his eyes
truly opened.

"No Bombos ever came to Carolina," he now continued, "that I know of, or
that Aunt Josephine knows of, which is more to the point. Aunt Josephine
has copied me a passage from the writings of William Byrd, Esq., of
Westover, Virginia, in which mention is made, not of the family, but of
a rum punch which seems to have been concocted first by Admiral Bombo,
from a New England brand of rum so very deadly that it was not inaptly
styled 'kill-devil' by the early planters of the colony. That the punch
drifted to Carolina and still survives there, you have reason to know.
Therefore if any remote ancestors of yours contracted an alliance with
Kill-devil Bombo, I can imagine no resulting offspring of such union but
a series of severe attacks of delir--"

"What?" interrupted Aunt