"I've heard others make that selfsame remark," said J. Willoughby, cheerfully, "but they never struck off the aureate shackles!"
"My friend, it's not in striking off shackles; that is always difficult. The secret is in not letting them become shackles!" said Jerningham, grimly. "A man does not confidently expect during twenty-five years to strike it rich some day without very carefully thinking of what he is going to do with the gold after he gets it."
The story, as James Willoughby Parkhurst wrote it, and even as the _Planet_ printed it, was a masterpiece. It was far more interesting than a fake. The truth often may be stranger than fiction, but it is seldom so exciting. With the generous desire to repay Jerningham's hospitality with kindness, to say nothing of an eye for the picturesque, the reporter made his victim an Admirable Crichton. Parkhurst's Jerningham was very distinguished-looking, which every woman knows is better for a man than being handsome. He not only was "probably the richest man in the world," but a fine linguist--indeed, a philologist. You saw Jerningham digging in his gravel-bank by day---spadeful after spadeful of clear gold-dust--and at nights reading Aristophanes in the original by the flickering and malodorous light of seal-fat lamps.
On the same day that Jerningham learned that his own wealth was practically inexhaustible, and decided to limit his income in order that gold might not be demonetized, he--the philologist in him--discovered also amazing analogies between certain Eskimo and Aleutian words and their equivalents in Tibetan. This and a monograph on "Totemism in the Light of Its Undoubted Babylonian Origin," he would read in London before the Royal Society. Of Jerningham's ancestry the article said that the erudite Croesus was "of the Long Island Jerninghams."
At three separate and distinct places in the article, each time differently worded, but the intention and purpose thereof being the same, the writer said that for generosity, lavish extravagance, capacity for spending, and deep-rooted belief that there was no difference between gold coins and stage money, the learned Klondiker was a combination of Monte Cristo, Boni de Castellane, Coal-Oil Johnny, and Alcibiades--only more so. But his feverish efforts were all in vain--he only grew richer! If he decided to give a million to a newsboy who was polite, that same moment he would be sure to get a cablegram from one of his superintendents that the vein had widened to three miles and the assays jumped to three hundred thousand dollars a ton.