is capable at times of gathering as much moss as a stationary one, and
how it is possible for the rock with St. Vitus dance to become more
coated than the one that is confined to perpetual isolation. Like most
iconoclasts he was of humble birth, and had no foundation upon which to
rest the cornerstone of his castle, which was becoming too heavy for his
brain to support much longer.

His strong suit was his itinerate susceptibility; but his main anchorage
was his better five-fifths. One of his most monotonous arguments was to
the effect that the strenuousness of life could only be equalled by the
monotony of it, and that it was a pity we had to do so much in this
world to get so little out of it.

"Why should a man be anchored to one spot of the geographical
distribution like a barnacle to a ship during the whole of his mortal
belligerency?" he one day asked his wife. "We hear nothing, see nothing,
become nothing, and our system becomes fossilized, antediluvian. Why not
see everything, know everything? Life is hardly worth while, but since
we are here we may as well feed from the choicest fruits, and try for
the first prizes."

Now, his wife was one of those happy, contented, sweet,
make-the-best-of-it-cheerily persons who never complained even under the
most trying circumstances. It is much to the detriment of society that
the variety is not more numerous, but we are not here to criticise the
laws that govern the human nature of the ladies. This lady was as far
remote from her husband in temperament as Venus is from Neptune. He was
darkness, she was daylight; and the patience with which she tolerated
him in his dark moods was beautiful though tragic. It was plain that she
loved him, for what else in a woman could overlook such darkness in a