hrow an ordinary
man. I suppose it was merely that this man's life capital had run out.
There is a great deal in heredity. Sometimes I think that each child is
born with just such a capital and vitality, something which could be
represented in figures if we knew how to do it; and that, though it is
affected to an extent by ways of living, the amount of capital
determines, within certain limits, to a certainty how long its possessor
will do business on this round lump of earth. I think Parasang's time
for liquidation had come. That is all. As for Mrs. Parasang, I think she
could have stayed a little longer if she had cared to do so, but she
went away because he had gone. One can just lie down and die sometimes.

I have drifted away from what I was going to say--this problem of dying
always attracts--but I will try to get back to the subject proper. I was
going to tell of the odd love story of the Parasangs, or at least what
struck me as odd, because, as I have said, of their ages. There is
nothing in it particular aside from that.

A little less than fifty years ago--that must have been about when
Taylor was President--Parasang was engaged to marry a girl of whom he
was very fond, and who was very fond of him. Well, these two, much in
love, and just suited to each other, must needs have a difference of the
sort known as a lovers' quarrel. That in itself was nothing to speak of,
for most lovers, being young and fools, do the same thing. But it so
happened that these two, being also high-spirited, carried the
difference farther than is usual with smitten, callow males and females,
and let the breach widen until they separated, as they thought, finally.
And she married in course of time, and so did he. It's a way people
have; a way more or less good or bad, according to circumstances. She
lived with a commonplace husband until he died and left her a widow,
aged sixty or thereabout. Mr. Parasang's wife died about the same time.
What sort of a woman she was I do not know. I remember the old gentleman
told me once that she was an excellent housekeeper and had the gift of
talking late o' nights. I could not always tell what Parasang meant when
he said things. He was one of the sort of old gentlemen who leave much
to be inferred.

Parasang had drifted here, and was a reasonably well-to-do man. His old
sweetheart had come also because her late husband had made an
investment here, and she found it to her interest to live where h