handed Nevil in his banana-wreath about to their friends. Nevil, in his
banana-wreath, was set preaching 'humanitomtity.' At any rate, they
contrived to keep the remembrance of Nevil Beauchamp alive during the
period of his disappearance from the world, and in so doing they did him
a service.

There is a pause between the descent of a diver and his return to the
surface, when those who would not have him forgotten by the better world
above him do rightly to relate anecdotes of him, if they can, and to
provoke laughter at him. The encouragement of the humane sense of
superiority over an object of interest, which laughter gives, is good for
the object; and besides, if you begin to tell sly stories of one in the
deeps who is holding his breath to fetch a pearl or two for you all, you
divert a particular sympathetic oppression of the chest, that the
extremely sensitive are apt to suffer from, and you dispose the larger
number to keep in mind a person they no longer see. Otherwise it is
likely that he will, very shortly after he has made his plunge, fatigue
the contemplative brains above, and be shuffled off them, even as great
ocean smoothes away the dear vanished man's immediate circle of foam, and
rapidly confounds the rippling memory of him with its other agitations.
And in such a case the apparition of his head upon our common level once
more will almost certainly cause a disagreeable shock; nor is it
improbable that his first natural snorts in his native element, though
they be simply to obtain his share of the breath of life, will draw down
on him condemnation for eccentric behaviour and unmannerly; and this in
spite of the jewel he brings, unless it be an exceedingly splendid one.
The reason is, that our brave world cannot pardon a breach of continuity
for any petty bribe.

Thus it chanced, owing to the prolonged efforts of Mr. Romfrey and Cecil