ood in
the doorway of my office, and held me with his glittering eye. He
lifted his skinny hand to his long gray beard, and then gravely tipped
his oiled hat. "The reader for Spry, Stromboli, and Smith?"

I had that honor, and handed him a chair. He sat in it after the
manner of a flounder, concentrated his eye upon me like a star-fish,
and produced a roll of manuscript with the fluttering claws of a
lobster. Then he stirred and squirmed, like an elderly eel, looking
distrustfully into the vestibule. I closed the door and begged to be
informed of his business.

"I have a great work for you," he said mysteriously, proffering his
manuscript. As he leaned over to do this, I saw a shining something on
the top of his head, but the thick white hair concealed it when he
resumed his place. The manuscript smelled as if it had contained
mackerel, and looked as if it had come from the bottom of the sea. I
found, curiously enough, some fish-scales adhering to it, and its
title very oddly confirmed these testimonies--"Five Years in the Great
Deep."

I glanced at the author with some surprise. He was the quaintest of
mariners, and if I had met him leagues under the sea, I should have
thought him in his proper element. His locks were like dry sea-weed;
his cheeks were so swollen that they might have contained gills, but
this was probably tobacco. When he wiped his nose with a handkerchief
like a scoop-net, some shells and pebbles fell from his pocket, and
his ears flapped like a pair of ventrals. I remarked as he pursued the
lost articles over the floor, that he wore a microscope strapped in a
leathern case, and a geological hammer belted to his side. He walked
as if habituated to swimming, and when he shrugged his shoulders I
expected to see a dorsal fin burst out of the back of his jacket. He
might have been sixty years of age, but looked much older, and behaved
like a well-born person, though, superficially judged, he might have
lived in Billingsgate.

"A good title for a fiction," I said encouragingly.

"I never penned a line of fiction in my life," exclaimed my visitor
sternly.

Referring to the copy again, I saw that it purported to be the work of
"Rudentia Jones, Fellow of the Palaeontologic Society, Entomologist to
the Institute for Harmonizing the Universes, and Ruler of Subaqueous
Creation, excepting the Finny Mammalia."

"Ah! I see," said I; "a capital title for a satire!"

"Life is too grave, and science too sac