My Sicilian, with his earrings and his crimson headwear of silk, is with me; for he could not have lived had I left him in town, being no more able to help himself than a ship ashore. Here he is busy and happy over nothing. He has whittled for himself a trio of little boats, and he sails them on the pond at the lawn's foot. One of these he has named the Democrat, while the others are the Republican and the Mugwump. He sails them against each other; and I think that by some marine sleight he gives the Democrat the best of it, since it ever wins, which is not true of politics. My Sicilian has just limped up the hill with a story of how, in the last race, the Republican and the Mugwump ran into one another and capsized, while the Democrat finished bravely. Save for my Sicilian, and a flock of sable ravens that by their tameness and a confident self-sufficiency have made themselves part of the household, I pass the day between my beeches undisturbed. The ravens are grown so proud with safety that, when I am walking, they often hold the path against me, picking about for the grains my Sicilian scatters, keeping upon me the while a truculent eye that is half cautious, half defiant. In the spring I watch these ravens throughout their nest-building, they living for the most part in the trees about my house. I've known them to be baffled during a whole two days, when winds were blowing and the swaying of the branches prevented their labors. Now and then I have a visit from Morton and the Reverend Bronson. The pair are as they were, only more age-worn and of a grayer lock. They were with me the other day; Morton as faultless of garb as ever, and with eyeglass as much employed, the Reverend Bronson as anxious as in the old time for the betterment of humanity. The spirit of unselfishness never flags in that good man's breast, although Morton is in constant bicker with him concerning the futility of his work. “The fault isn't in you, old chap,” said Morton, when last they were with me; “it isn't, really. But humanity in the mass is such a beastly dullard, don't y' know, that to do anything in its favor is casting pearls before swine.” “Why, then,” responded the Reverend Bronson with a smile, “if I were you, I should help mankind for the good it gave me, without once thinking on the object of my generosity.” “But,” returned Morton, “I take no personal joy from helping people. Gad! it wearies me. Man is such a perverse beggar; he's ever wrong end to in his affairs. The entire race is like a horse turned round in its stall, and with its tail in the fodder stands shouting for hay. If men, in what you call their troubles, would but face the other way about, nine times in ten they'd be all right. They wouldn't need help--really!” “And if what you say be true,” observed the Reverend Bronson, who was as fond of argument as was Morton, “then you have outlined your duty. You say folk are turned wrong in their affairs. Then you should help them to turn right.”