_John_ is a dollar-snob--it is _John's_ parlour--and has two sisters, _Jean_ and _Helen_. _John_ is easily the heavy-weight champion in stage brothers. Sister _Jean_, who is entirely dependent on _John_, loves a poor man, but under _John's_ guidance traps a rich one. Sister _Helen_ (who has a job) also loves a poor man, but thinks marriage not good enough. This was, I imagine, due chiefly to living with _John_ and _Mrs. John_. She may have got a touch of the sun-parlour. Her man is a terrific young scientist, who once with four colleagues deliberately let a dangerous Cuban mosquito nibble his arm. The colleagues died while _Ernest_ survived, which I regretted. However he became demonstrator at the Institute of Bacteriology, with _Helen_ as his assistant, and in the excitement of the imminent discovery of his new bacillus the two spend the night in the laboratory totally unchaperoned. The discovery saved thousands of American babes, but it ruined _Helen's_ reputation. Here the narrative becomes confused, but anyhow _John_, who was a trustee of the Institute, spent the three Acts in alternately sacking and reinstating _Helen_ and _Ernest_, in thinking of a salary, doubling it, adding thousands of dollars to it and taking away the salary first thought of, together with the additions (and so _da capo_), according as he wished to prevent the marriage because of _Ernest's_ poverty, or bring it off because of _Ernest's_ disposition to take _Helen_ to Paris (France) and dispense with empty rites, or postpone it to gain time, or, on the contrary, have it celebrated between the dressing and the dinner gongs in order to announce it to important members of the family, who, if I understood the butler aright, had already fallen on their food while host and hostess, two pairs of lovers, Uncle _Everett_ and Cousin _John_ were bickering in the sun-parlour. Cousin _Theodore_, a guileless and dollarless clergyman, padded about on the outskirts of the discussion, making obvious remarks about the sanctity of marriage and enunciating the highest principles, which he promptly swallowed. But it was Uncle _Everett_, the judge (the only human figure in the bunch), who grasped the fact (long after I did, but let that pass) that the two principal young egotists simply loved being talked over at such gross length. To put an end to the business he used a trick whereby, apparently according to the law of the unnamed State in which the parlour was situate, the two were legally married without intending it. They had the tact to accept this solution, and this softened my heart towards them for the first time.