To perfect my happiness here;
For the _utile et duloc_ would blend.
If I had a thousand a-year.

* * * * *


MY UNCLE BUCKET.

The Buckets are a large family! I am one of them--my uncle Job Bucket is
another. We, the Buckets, are atoms of creation; yet we, the Buckets, are
living types of the immensity of the world's inhabitants. We illustrate
their ups and downs--their fulness and their emptiness--their risings and
their falling--and all the several goods and ills, the world's denizens in
general, and Buckets in particular, are undoubted heirs to.

It hath ever been the fate of the fulness of one Bucket to guarantee the
emptiness of another; and (mark the moral!) the rising Bucket is the
richly-stored one; its sinking brother's attributes, like Gratiano's wit,
being "an infinite deal of nothing." Hence the adoption of our name for the
wooden utensils that have so aptly fished up this fact from the deep well
of truth.

There be certain rods that attract the lightning. We are inclined to think
there be certain Buckets that invite kicking, and our uncle Job was one of
them. He was birched at school for everybody but himself, for he never
deserved it! He was plucked at college--because some practical joker placed
a utensil, bearing his name, outside the door of the examining master, and
our uncle Job Bucket being unfortunately present, laughed at the consequent
abrasion of his, the examining master's, shins. He was called to the bar.