II
This was the story:
Back four years, Albany would have shown you young Jones opening his law office in that hamlet. Mary was “Mary Van Epps.” At that time seventeen years was all the family register allowed to her for age.
Her father, Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, was one of the leading citizens of Albany. While not a millionaire, he was of sufficient wealth to dazzle the local eye, and he was always mentioned by the denizens of his native place as “rich.”
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps had a weakness. He was slave to the pedigree habit. Never a day went by but he called somebody's attention to those celebrities who aforetime founded and set flowing the family of Van Epps; and he proposed at some hour in the future to write a history of that eminent house. With his wealth and his family pride to prompt him, it came easy one day for Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps to object with decision and vigour to a match between young Jones and his daughter Mary.
“They were both fools!” he said.
Then he pointed out that the day would never dawn when a plebeian like unto Jones, without lineage or lucre, boasting nothing better than a law office vacant of practice, and on which the rent was in arrears three months, would wed a daughter of the Van Epps. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, in elaboration of his objection, showed that beyond a taste to drink whiskey and a speculative bent toward draw poker, he knew of nothing which young Jones possessed. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps closed, as he began, with the emphatic announcement that no orange blossoms would ever blow for the nuptials of young Jones and Mary Van Epps.
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps in his attitude will have the indorsement of all good Christian people. He was right as a father. As a prophet touching orange blossoms, however, he was what vulgar souls call “off.” Of that anon.