He is a well-formed and very complete skeleton of middle height—perfect in every respect, and in all his articulations, with the exception of two double teeth absent from the upper jaw. The arch of his lower ribs is peculiarly symmetrical, and his vertebræ are put in with a singular combination of flexibility and strength. As I look at him now leaning back in a graceful attitude, with one thigh-bone thrown carelessly over the other, he reminds me of so many people I knew when I lived in the world, that I seem to fancy myself once more a denizen of that revolving purgatory which goes by the name of general society. Poor A—— was almost as fleshless, B—— much more taciturn, and C—— decidedly not so good-looking. “Bones,” however, possesses a quality that I have never found in any other companion. His tact is beyond praise. Under no circumstances does he become a bore—that is why we get on so admirably together. Like a ghost, he speaks only when spoken to. Unlike a wife, refrains from monopolising the last word. If he didn’t rattle so on the slightest movement—a fault of anatomy, indeed, rather than temper—as a companion he would be—perfection. It is a dull, close evening. Were it not so near winter one might predict a thunderstorm. The smoke from my meerschaum winds upwards in thin blue wreaths, uninfluenced by a breath of outward air, though the windows are open to the deserted street, black and silent as the grave. My lamp is not yet lit (we both affect a congenial gloom), the fire is burning out, but there is a dull red glow like a fever-spot lowering under a volcanic arch of cinders; and looking into it with unwinking eyes, I see the long-drawn, weary, beaten road that leads backward through a life. I see a child set down to run alone, half-frightened, laughing, trusting, almost happy, and altogether gay. I see a youth bold, healthful, courageous, full of an impossible chivalry, a romantic generosity that delights to lavish no matter what—money, love, hope, happiness, coining heart and intellect into gold that he may squander it on the passers-by. I see a strong man crushed—a proud head grovelling in the dust, a high spirit broken, a cowering wretch imploring that his punishment may be lightened ever such a little, trembling and wincing like a slave beneath the scourge. At this moment the fire falls in with a crash, while a pale yellow flame leaps flickering out of the midst, and starting from my seat to light our lamp for the rest of the evening, I demand aloud, “What then is the purpose of Creation? From a quenched rushlight to an extinct volcano, from the squeak of a mouse to yesterday’s leading article, from a mite smothered in a cheese to an Emperor murdered in Mexico, is the march of Time but the destructive progress of a bull in a china-shop? Are the recurring centuries but so many ciphers added to the sum of a thriftless, objectless expenditure? Is the so-called economy of the universe but an unbridled, haphazard course of boundless