ttom (in a suit of patent
sub-marine Scriptural armor) of a no less abysmal subject than the
cryptology of Genesis,--to have undermined with his sapping intellect
and blown up with his explosive wisdom the walled secrets of time and
eternity, carrying away with him in the shape of plunder a whole cargo
of the plans and purposes of the Omnipotent in the Creation. I have not
the least doubt, if he were respectfully approached and interrogated
upon the subject, he would answer with the greatest ease and accuracy
the famous question with which Dean Swift posed the theological tailor.
The man who can tell us all about the institution of the law of gravity,
how the inspired prophet thought and felt while writing his history, and
who knows everything respecting "affinity and attraction when they
were in Creation's womb," could not hesitate a moment to measure an
arch-angel for a pair of breeches.--But I was talking of _funerals_.

* * * * *

A friend once assured me that the heartiest laugh of which he was ever
guilty on a solemn occasion occurred at a funeral. A trusty Irish
servant, who had lived with him for many years, and for whom he had
great affection, died suddenly at his house. As he was attending the
funeral in the Catholic burial-place, and stood with his wife and
children listening to the service which the priest was reading, his
heart filled with grief and his eyes moist with tears, the inscription
on a gravestone just before him happened to attract his attention. It
was this_:--"Gloria in Excelsis Deo!_ Patrick Donahoe died July 12.
18--." Now the exclamation-point after _"Deo"_ and the statement of
the fact of Mr. D.'s demise following immediately thereafter made the
epitaph to read, "Glory to God in the highest! Patrick is dead." This,
which at another time would perhaps have caused no more than a smile,
struck him as irresistibly funny, and drove in a moment every trace
of sadness from his face and sorrow from his heart,--to give place to
violent emotions of another nature, which his utmost exertions could not
conceal.

["I beg your pardon! I've been afloat," was the graceful parenthetical
apology which a distinguished naval officer used to make, when by
mistake he let drop one of "those big words which lie at the bottom of
the best man's vocabulary," in conversation with sensitive persons whose
ears he feared it might offend. I ought possibly, at the end of the
following anec