The printed
formulas of acknowledgment which arrived in return were preserved as the
rarest treasures.
And in fulness of time all this corresponding and presenting produced a
glorious result. Elijah Prowley, of Foxden, was chosen an Honorary
Member of the Royal Society of British Sextons,--an association than
which there is none more mouldy in the whole world. Certainly, this was
glory enough for any Western genealogist,--yet Fortune had a higher
gratification to bestow. For, in His Worship, the Most Primordial, the
High Senior Governour and Primitive Patriarch of all Sextons, Colonel
Prowley soon discovered a relative of his own. Sir Joseph Barley, a
rubicund old knight, and the Most Primordial in question, after an
elaborate investigation and counter-investigation, a jockeying of the
wits of very old women, and a raid into divers registers, scrolls,
schedules, archives, and the like,--Sir Joseph Barley, I say, turned out
to be _a long-lost cousin_. "Barley," it appeared, had anciently been
written "Parley," and "Praley," and even "Proley." Having arrived at
this point, Sir Joseph conjectured that his ancestor Proley might have
dropped a _w_ out of his name, and the Colonel conjectured that his
progenitor, the Puritan, might have put one into his.
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