a dream--even as the newly-hatched chicken has remembered in its egg the
use of eyes and ears and the rest, out of the fulness of its long
antenatal experience; and more fortunate than the helpless human infant
in this respect, can enter on the business and pleasures of its brief,
irresponsible existence at once!

* * * * *

Wherefore, oh reader, if you be but sound in mind and body, it most
seriously behooves you (not only for the sake of those who come after
you, but your own) to go forth and multiply exceedingly, to marry early
and much and often, and to select the very best of your kind in the
opposite sex for this most precious, excellent, and blessed purpose;
that all your future reincarnations (and hers), however brief, may be
many; and bring you not only joy and peace and pleasurable wonderment
and recreation, but the priceless guerdon of well-earned self-approval!

For whoever remembers having once been you, wakes you for the nonce out
of--nirvana, shall we say? His strength, his beauty, and his wit are
yours; and the felicity he derives from them in this earthly life is for
you to share, whenever this subtle remembrance of you stirs in his
consciousness; and you can never quite sink back again into--nirvana,
till all your future wakers shall cease to be!

It is like a little old-fashioned French game we used to play at Passy,
and which is not bad for a dark, rainy afternoon: people sit all round
in a circle, and each hands on to his neighbor a spill or a
lucifer-match just blown out, but in which a little live spark still
lingers; saying, as he does so--