tempt to determine the causation of her favorite
causes, and she derided the modern doctrines of evolution and inherent
force as atheistic because materialistic. The two words meant the same
thing with her; and the more shadowy and unintelligible people made
the _causa causarum_ the more she believed in their knowledge and
their piety. The bitterest quarrel she had ever had was with an old
friend, an unimaginative anatomist, who one day gravely proved to her
that spirits must be mere filmy bags, pear-shaped, if indeed they
had any visual existence at all. Bit by bit he eliminated all the
characteristics and circumstances of the human form on the principle
of the non-survival of the useless and unadaptable. For of what use
are shapes and appliances if you have nothing for them to do?--if you
have no need to walk, to grasp, nor yet to sit? Of what use organs
of sense when you have no brain to which they lead?--when you are
substantially all brain and the result independent of the method?
Hence he abolished by logical and anatomical necessity, as well as the
human form, the human face with eyes, ears, nose and mouth, and by
the inexorable necessities of the case came down to a transparent bag,
pear-shaped, for the better passage of his angels through the air.

"A fulfillment of the old proverb that extremes meet," he said by
way of conclusion. "The beginning of man an ascidian--his ultimate
development as an angel, a pear-shaped, transparent bag."

Mrs. Corfield never forgave her old friend, and even now if any one
began a conversation on the theory of development and evolution she
invariably lost her temper and permitted herself to say rude things.
Her idea of angels and souls in bliss was the good orthodox notion of
men and women with exactly the same features and identity as they had
when in the flesh, but infinitely more beautiful; retaining the Ego,
but the Ego refined and purified out of all trace of human weakness,
all characteristic passions, tempers and proclivities; and the
pear-shaped bag was as far removed from the truth, as she held it, on
the one side as Leam's materialistic conception was on the other. The
character and condition of departed souls was one of the subjects on
which she was very positive and very aggressive, and Leam had a hard
fight of it when her hostess came to discuss her mother's present
personality and whereabouts, and wanted to convince her of her
transformation.

All the same, the li