le ages with his gold; this knowledge of yours,
which you haven't enough knowledge to know how to make a right use of,
it should be taken from you. And so I have been thinking all along."

"You are merry, sir. But you have a little looked into St. Augustine I
suppose."

"St. Augustine on Original Sin is my text book. But you, I ask again,
where do you find time or inclination for these out-of-the-way
speculations? In fact, your whole talk, the more I think of it, is
altogether unexampled and extraordinary."

"Respected sir, have I not already informed you that the quite new
method, the strictly philosophical one, on which our office is founded,
has led me and my associates to an enlarged study of mankind. It was my
fault, if I did not, likewise, hint, that these studies directed always
to the scientific procuring of good servants of all sorts, boys
included, for the kind gentlemen, our patrons--that these studies, I
say, have been conducted equally among all books of all libraries, as
among all men of all nations. Then, you rather like St. Augustine, sir?"

"Excellent genius!"

"In some points he was; yet, how comes it that under his own hand, St.
Augustine confesses that, until his thirtieth year, he was a very sad
dog?"

"A saint a sad dog?"

"Not the saint, but the saint's irresponsible little forerunner--the
boy."

"All boys are rascals, and so are all men," again flying off at his
tangent; "my name is Pitch; I stick to what I say."

"Ah, sir, permit me--when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus
eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude
that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but
an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more
than in nature herself."

"Well, really, now--really," fidgeted the bachelor, not unaffected in
his conscience by these benign personalities, "really, really, now, I
don't know but that I may have been a little bit too hard upon those
five and thirty boys of mine."

"Glad to find you a little softening, sir. Who knows now, but that
flexile gracefulness, however questionable at the time of that thirtieth
boy of yours, might have been the silky husk of the most solid qualities
of maturity. It might have been with him as with the ear of the Indian
corn."

"Yes, yes, yes," excitedly cried the bachelor, as the light of this new
illustration broke in, "yes, yes; and now that I think of it, how o