The gentlemen were to be in the parquette. When the ladies appeared on the stage, at the word “Go” from De June, the sixteen men were to make a rush for the stage and each seize his future wife. All after the manner of the Romans who captured the Sabine women—and I guess the Roman Nation is not to be sneezed at! Cæsar, Antony, Brutus and all the rest of those honorable men were products of just such marriages. The rush was made—the women screamed, some fainted, but each man held his prize. The electric lights were turned off, the audience got out as best it could. Then the doors were locked, the curtain dropped and Signor De June stepped forward and in gentle words assured the sixteen ladies that no harm should come to them. All had been arranged for the best. They must be good honest wives, and the men must be good honest husbands, and Mr. Hunks, being a Justice of the Peace, declared them all man and wife—that is sixteen wives and sixteen husbands. The women, it must be confessed, had grown a trifle weary of the De June Idyllic Plan; and in the good old-fashioned womanly way, oft in the night season, each had confessed in her own heart, that one loving husband for each woman was what Nature intended. So they accepted the situation, and each began to use those winning ways that Herbert Spencer says are woman’s weapons: woman conquers through her intuition. At a word from De June the women repaired to their dressing rooms and soon appeared in customary feminine attire. This time the ladies had to pick their mates, for the change in dress greatly mystified the hirsute miners. There was a slight scramble among the ladies when three of them selected the same man, but the Signor soon brought order out of chaos. This scene, which occurs in chapter XXXIII, is quite dramatic. All being amicably settled De June gave each woman a chaste kiss on the cheek, shook hands with the grateful miners and went sorrowfully back (with his $3,200.00) to the hotel where his Mary Jane sat up awaiting him. That night Mr. Hunks and his wife left for Chicago. There he went into real estate and was very successful. Having resolved to face his fate, he treated Mary Jane as gently as he could and she repaid it all in kindness. So things were really not so bad as the Signor had imagined.