“Yes, dear old Aunt Judy!” said Mary, smiling. “But _John_ Smith, Alice,—_John!_ How can you believe that any Smith, senior, in the full blaze of the nineteenth century, would name his son _John_?” “I think it in the highest degree improbable,” said Alice. “Improbable, Alice? Why, it is preposterous. At any rate, be there or be there not John Smiths in the world, that is not _his_ name.” “With his starry eyes!” put in Alice, languishingly. “With his starry eyes!” repeated Mary, smiling. “No; say what he will, John Smith is no more his name than Don Miff was. And as I, somehow, like the oddity of the latter, Don Miff shall he be with me till the end of the chapter.” “Selah!” said Alice. CHAPTER X. The most dangerous gift that a man can possess is superior skill in perilous employments. Sooner or later the most illustrious lion-tamer furnisheth forth funeral unbaked meats to the lordly beast he has so long bullied. Sooner or later, dies miserably the snake-charmer, charm he never so wisely. The noble art of self-defence has been brought to high perfection; but you shall no more find a prize-fighter with a straight nose than a rope-dancer with sound ribs. Every now and then (for the danger is not confined to the experts themselves) a bullet, advertised to perforate an orange, ploughs the scalp (though rarely reaching the brain) of its human support; and I make no doubt that the eminent pippin upon which Swiss liberty is based might have been placed once too often on his son’s head, had not William Tell abandoned, when he did, archery for politics. I have been led into this train of thought by an accident which befell a number of the actors in our drama, through intrusting their limbs, their lives, and their sacred necks to the keeping of a young man who was reputed to be the best driver of Richmond in his day. Now, no true artist is content unless he may exhibit his virtuosity; and this young man, like all crack whips, had conceived the notion that the art of driving consisted, not in bringing back his passengers to their point of departure, safe and sound, but rather in showing how near he could take them to the gates of Paradise without actually ushering them therein. To him the sweetest incense was the long-drawn sigh of relief breathed out by his friends when deposited, once again and alive, at their front door. Who but he could have controlled such untrained horses,—spirited is what he calls them? Who passed that wagon at that precise spot,—made that rapid turn without upsetting? Think not, my boy, that it escapes me that in your bright day of things perfected there will be no more drivers of horses,—nor horses either, for that matter, save in zoological gardens. Not forgetting this, but remembering that human nature remains the same, have I written these words. Beware, then, oh, last lingering male, perhaps, of the line of the Whackers, beware of the crack balloonist of your favored time!