gulf has been so rough that there
has hardly any fish come in this three days, and there has been such a
run on it that we have nothing left but plaice.'

"'Well, well,' I shall say, 'have you any kidneys?'

"'You can have one kidney, sir', will be the answer.

"'One kidney, indeed, and you call this heaven! At any rate you will
have sausages?'

"'Then the angel will say, 'We shall have some after Sunday, sir, but we
are quite out of them at present.'

"And I shall say, somewhat sulkily, 'Then I suppose I must have eggs and
bacon.'

"But in the morning there will come up a red mullet, beautifully cooked,
a couple of kidneys and three sausages browned to a turn, and seasoned
with just so much sage and thyme as will savour without overwhelming
them; and I shall eat everything. It shall then transpire that the angel
knew about the luggage, and what I was to have for breakfast, all the
time, but wanted to give me the pleasure of finding things turn out
better than I had expected. Heaven would be a dull place without such
occasional petty false alarms as these."

I have no business to leave my father's story, but the mouth of the ox
that treadeth out the corn should not be so closely muzzled that he
cannot sometimes filch a mouthful for himself; and when I had copied out
the foregoing somewhat irreverent paragraphs, which I took down (with no
important addition or alteration) from my father's lips, I could not
refrain from making a few reflections of my own, which I will ask the
reader's forbearance if I lay before him.

Let heaven and hell alone, but think of Hades, with Tantalus, Sisyphus,
Tityus, and all the rest of them. How futile were the attempts of the
old Greeks and Romans to lay before us any plausible conception of
eternal torture. What were the Danaids doing but that which each one of
us has to do during his or her whole life? What are our bodies if not
sieves that we are for ever trying to fill, but which we must refill
continually without hope of being able to keep them full for long
together? Do we mind this? Not so long as we can get the wherewithal to
fill them; and the Danaids never seem to have run short of water. They
would probably ere long take to clearing out any obstruction in their
sieves if they found them getting choked. What could it matter to them
whether the sieves got full or no? They were not paid for filling them.

Sisyphus, again! Can any one believe that he would go on