said she. "Even George owns that he has no criticisms to make."

"Aunt Sarah tells the loftiest truth, Uncle William," said the
professor; "every Christian emblem about the church is superlatively
correct, but paleontologically it is a fraud. Wharton and Hazard did the
emblems, and I supplied them with antediluvian beasts which were all
right when I drew them, but Wharton has played the devil with them, and
I don't believe he knows the difference between a saurian and a crab. I
could not recognize one of my own offspring."

"And how did it suit you, Esther?"

"I am charmed," replied his daughter. "Only it certainly does come just
a little near being an opera-house. Mr. Hazard looks horribly like
Meyerbeer's Prophet. He ordered us about in a fine tenor voice, with his
eyes, and told us that we belonged to him, and if we did not behave
ourselves he would blow up the church and us in it. I thought every
moment we should see his mother come out of the front pews, and have a
scene with him. If the organ had played the march, the effect would have
been complete, but I felt there was something wanting."

"It was the sexton," said the professor; "he ought to have had a
medieval costume. I must tell Wharton to-night to invent one for him.
Hazard has asked me to come round to his rooms, because he thinks I am
an unprejudiced observer and will tell him the exact truth. Now what am
I to say?"

"Tell him," said the aunt, "that he looked like a Christian martyr
defying the beasts in the amphitheater, and George, you are one of them.
Between you and your Uncle William I wonder how Esther and I keep any