But it may be set down as an axiom, that one half the world does not live as the other half does. People’s tastes differ, and there are very few who would wish to live exactly like others, especially if those to whom the choice is offered are richer than the others. There are many who would not change places with their wealthy neighbors, and it is more than probable that their wealthy neighbors would not change places with them. The majority of sailors are not happy when on shore, but are constantly sighing for a wet sheet and a flowing sea, while the majority of landsmen have no desire for such hydropathic experience. When Mungo Park travelled in Africa, the natives expressed great pity for him because he had lost his color; they constantly mourned over the unhappy lot of the white man, and would have been quite unwilling to change complexions with him. Mungo received their sympathy with a countenance becomingly solemn, but the chances are more than even that what they regarded as a misfortune was by him considered a blessing. “Give me a bed of ice and a pillow of snow,” said a moribund Laplander in Italy, “and I shall die happy.” A refrigerating couch of this kind would be comfortless in the extreme to a countryman of Pauline Borghese. A comparatively small portion of the human race lives, or would wish to live, beneath the surface of the globe. Most of us rarely go there voluntarily, and our first visits of any important duration are made after we have shuffled off this mortal coil and invoked the aid of the sexton. Then we are carried there without protest, and the earth is filled above us in sufficient depth to guard us against ordinary intrusions. We may be certain that none of our friends will come in living flesh to join us, and when death brings them to our side their slumbers will be as long and peaceful as our own. The earth, beneath its surface, is regarded by many, as the dwelling-place of Death, to be contemplated with a shudder, and to be visited only when life has left us.