stretched out on all sides of her, and on all sides called her mistress. Yet for all this, Solomon Jericho was ordinarily a dull, matter-of-fact man. Talk to him of Jacob’s ladder, and he would ask the number of the steps.

All his life had Jericho trod upon firm earth; but widow Pennibacker whipped him off his leaden feet, and carried him away into the fairy ground of Mammon; and there his eyes twinkled at imaginary wealth, and his ears burned and stood erect at the sound of shaken shadowy money-bags.

And so, each trusting to each, Solomon Jericho and Sabilla Pennibacker wooed and won each other; and the winning over, each had to count the gains. It was very strange. Jericho himself could not bear to think of the folly, the crime of the omission. Such neglect had never before betrayed him. Why[Pg 9] had he not assured himself of the woman’s property, ere he made the woman his own? And then, for his cold comfort, he would remember that he had, on two or three occasions touched a little gravely upon the subject, whereupon Mrs. Pennibacker so opened her large, black, mysterious orbs, that his soul, like a mouse when startled by Grimalkin’s eyes—ran back into its hole. Again and again—it was a wretched satisfaction for the married man to think it—the question had been upon his tongue; when some smile of haughty loveliness would curve the widow’s lips and—how well he recollected the emotion—he felt himself the meanest wretch to doubt her.

[Pg 9]

Mrs. Pennibacker had, on her part, just played about the property of Jericho; but, with the trustingness of her sex, she was more than satisfied when Jericho, with all the simplicity of real worth, spoke calmly, yet withal hopefully, of the vast increase of profit arising from his platina mines. The word “platina” sent Mrs. Pennibacker to her Encyclopædia, which, however, comforted her exceedingly. She had instinctively known it all along; but she now felt assured,—Solomon Jericho, the holder of mines, possessed wealth inexhaustible. Being a City Gentleman, of course he sold his platina on the Stock Exchange.

The wedding was very gorgeous. Very rarely are two people joined together with so much expense. Nevertheless the contribution of either party—had the other known it—would have somewhat shaken Hymen; if, indeed, it had not wholly frightened him out of the church. Mrs. Pennibacker, when introduced to Jericho, was so deep in debt, that often, let folks try as they would, they could not see her. And Jericho—doubtless from a short supply of platina—was an object of extreme 

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