"'Coffin and Purse, you're wanted,' cried the king. And, indeed, Mrs. Pittis, and, indeed, gentlemen, I must turn aside one minute to remark the singularity of this king's body-guard, Coffin and Purse. 'Cash and Mortality,' said the king to me, 'make up, according to your theory, the aim and end of man. So with a couple of cinders you can twit him with his degradation. Sometimes Coffin, sometimes Purse, leaps out into his lap when he is cogitating.' 'Yes,' said I 'that will be extremely humorous. But, so please your majesty, I still have one objection to joining your honorable body.' 'What is that, Phil?' 'I suppose, if I sits down in them there flames, they'll burn me.' 'To be sure,' said the king, kicking up his heels, and scraping a furnace load of live coal over his body, just as you might pull up the blanket when you're in bed to-night, Mrs. Pittis. 'Well, your highness,' said I, 'how about the pain?' 'Pah!' says the king, 'where's your philosophy? Did you never see a fly jump into a lamp-flame?' 'Yes, sure,' I answered. 'And what happened then? A moment's crackle, and an end of it. You've no time to feel pain.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'if your majesty will make a hole for me as near the middle as is convenient to yourself, I will jump into the bed straightway.' The king made a great spatter among the coals, and in I jumped. You know, ma'am, that a great part of our bodies is composed of water.' "'I don't know that of any gentleman in this room,' replied the landlady. 'But I do believe that you are two parts built out of strong beer.' "There was a burst--a flash, gentlemen; the liquid part of me went off in instantaneous steam. I cried out with a sharp burn in my foot. The pot was boiling over furiously that contained our bit of dinner; and as I sat close in to the fire, I got considerably scalded. How I got back in the steam to my own fireside, I never rightly comprehended. Fill the can now, Mrs. Pittis." "'Yes,' said the landlady, 'but let me tell you, Mr. Spruce, that king of the hearth is a gentleman, and if you really had gone with the coals and got acquainted with fire-sides, it would have done you a great deal of good. You'd have owned then that there is a mighty deal more love than hatred in the world. You'd have heard round almost any hearth you chose to play eavesdropper to, household words, any thing but hard or bitter. Some people do not pay their scores with me, but, on the whole, I live. Some of our human natures may run termagant; but, on the whole, we men and women love. Among the worst are those who won't bear quietly their share of work, who can't learn self-reliance, but run to and fro, squealing for help, and talking sentiment against their neighbors, who won't carry their burdens for them. It's all very well for a musty, discontented old bachelor to say there's no love in the world, but it's a falsehood. I know better.' "'My pipe's out,' said the boy. 'Be smart there with the 'baccy.'"