They spent the evening in the old oak parlour, and conversed on various subjects, during which a knotty point opposing itself to the solution of an historical question, Mr. Forester expressed a wish to be allowed access to the reverend gentleman’s library. The reverend gentleman hummed awhile with great gravity and deliberation: then slowly rising from his large arm-chair, he walked across the room to the farther corner, where throwing open the door of a little closet, he said with extreme complacency, ‘There is my library: Homer, Virgil, and Horace, for old acquaintance sake, and the credit of my cloth: Tillotson, Atterbury, and Jeremy Taylor, for materials of exhortation and ingredients of sound doctrine: and for my own private amusement in an occasional half-hour between my dinner and my nap, a translation of Rabelais and _The Tale of a Tub_.’ _Mr. Fax._ A well-chosen collection. _The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._—_Multum in parvo._ But there is something that may amuse you: a little drawer of mineral specimens that have been picked up in this vicinity, and a fossil or two. Among the latter is a curious bone that was found in a hill just by, invested with stalactite. _Mr. Forester._ The bone of a human thumb, unquestionably. _The Rev. Mr. Portpipe._ Very probably. _Mr. Forester._ Which, by its comparative proportion, must have belonged to an individual about eleven feet six or seven inches in height: there are no such men now. _Mr. Fax._ Except, perhaps, among the Patagonians, whose existence is, however, disputed.