words spoken by people at the last, because often they don't
quite know what they are saying. Indeed sometimes I think this
was so in the case of my own wife, who really seemed to me to
talk a good deal of rubbish. Good-bye, I promised to see Widow
Jenkins this afternoon about having her varicose veins cut out,
and I mustn't stop here wasting time in pleasant conversation.
She thinks just as much of her varicose veins as we do of the
loss of our wives."

I wonder what Bastin's ideas of unpleasant conversation may be,
thought I to myself, as I watched him depart already
wool-gathering on some other subject, probably the heresy of one
of those "early fathers" who occupied most of his thoughts.

Bickley listened to my tale in sympathetic silence, as a doctor
does to a patient. When he was obliged to speak, he said that it
was interesting as an example of a tendency of certain minds
towards romantic vision which sometimes asserts itself, even in
the throes of death.

"You know," he added, "that I put faith in none of these
things. I wish that I could, but reason and science both show me
that they lack foundation. The world on the whole is a sad place,
where we arrive through the passions of others implanted in them
by Nature, which, although it cares nothing for individual death,
is tender towards the impulse of races of every sort to preserve
their collective life. Indeed the impulse is Nature, or at least
its chief manifestation. Consequently, whether we be gnats or
elephants, or anything between and beyond, even stars for aught I
know, we must make the best of things as they are, taking the