“Now, supposing the pap-boat had been withheld, or the nurse had tucked him into his cradle upside down, or—thus saving some harmless woman a deal of inconvenience and trouble—supposing he had never been born at all, would he have been missed, or wanted? Would not the world have gone on just as well without him? Has not his whole existence been a mistake? The food he ate, the clothes he wore, the house he lived in—were not these simply wasted? His efforts were waste, his wear-and-tear of body and mind were waste, above all, his sorrows and his sufferings were sheer, unpardonable waste. Yes; here I take my stand. I leave you every enjoyment to be found in creation, physical, moral, and intellectual. I make you a present of the elephant wallowing in his mud-bath, and the midge wheeling in the sun; I give you Juliet at her window, and Archimedes in his study; but I reserve the whale in her death-flurry, and the worm on its hook. I appeal to Jephthah sorrowing for his darling, and Rachel weeping for her children. I repeat, if that self-care, which indeed constitutes our very identity, be the object of existence, then all those tearful eyes that blur the light of every rising sun—all those aching hearts that long only for night to be eternal—are but so many witnesses to the predominance in creation of a lavish and unaccountable waste.” Like many thoughtful and deliberate natures, I am persuaded that in early life “Bones” must have been a snuff-taker. He affects a trick of holding his fleshless finger and thumb pressed together and suspended in air, before he delivers himself of an opinion, that can only have originated in a practice he has since been compelled, for obvious reasons, to forego. Pausing during several seconds in this favourite attitude, he sank gravely back in his chair, and replied—