globe was my only chart. I have studied in their places its divisions,
continents, capes and oceans; also the customs, politics and
philosophies of its inhabitants. I have a weakness for learning; I
have caused myself to be initiated in all secret and philosophical
societies; I have taken a degree from the Brahmans of Benares; I
have received the accolade from the emir of the Druses; I have been
instructed by the priests of the Grand Lama, and have joined the
Society of Pure Illumination, the sole possessors of the Future Light.
I have just returned from Persia, where I received the blessing of the
great Bâb; and, like Solomon, I can say, _Vanitas vanitatum_!"

The red nose was by this time quite inflated and inflamed with
disinterested pride. The blue was crushed, but he made a final effort,
as the silver-gray made his preparations to depart and adjusted his
breakfast-bill. "Pardon me, sir," he said, with a little infusion of
provincial pride. "I am not a cosmopolitan, a Constantinopolitan or a
Bâbist. But I enjoy your conversation, and am not entirely without
the ability to sympathize in your geographical calculations. I
am preparing at the present moment a small treatise on Submarine
Geography; I am conducting, if that gives me any right to be heard,
the geographical department in the chief gymnasium here: in addition,
my youngest sister lost her ulnar bone by the explosion of an obus in
the seminary on the night of August 18th, when six innocent infants
were killed or maimed by the Prussians, who put a bomb in their little
beds like a warming-pan."

[Illustration: THE BOTANIST.]

"Never mind the warming-pan," said the traveler kindly, seeing that
the professor was making himself cry, and unconsciously quoting