are satisfied with the security, down with the dust.'

"I once repeated it to a gaunt little parson, and his look of
unmitigated horror caused me to hide my diminished head. I knew from his
manner--he did not condescend a reply--what chamber in the Inferno was
being heated up for my especial benefit. Well, well! the sentiment is
doubtless creditable to his head and heart.

"What a pity it is I am not one of the 'good' people! What an
agonizingly cerulean expression I would wear, to be sure!

"I wonder why young mothers don't write for their children's first copy
Dante's inscription, and teach their baby lips to lisp of the world what
he says of hell. It's surprising to me that that parson is not crazed at
his sense of the certain perdition into which everybody except himself
is hurrying. Perhaps, after all, there is something in the question of
La Rochefoucauld, 'Is it not astonishing that we are not altogether
overpowered at the misfortunes of our friends?' Well, man learns
something every day. When I first saw a chicken take a billful of water
and hold up its head, in my childish simplicity I imagined it thanking
God: I afterward discovered it was only letting the water run down its
throat. My mind, like good wine or bad butter, must be strengthening by
age.

"Why can't we take things quietly, as we did when we were boys? I expect
I had a rather comfortable time of it then, though I did get whipped for
tearing my clothes, and killing flies, which I used to do worse than any
bald hornet.

"Now, that youngster walking before me is whistling like a lark, and, by