epitaph.

HERE LIES
HIS AFLICTED
MISS M. BURWELL'S
FATHEFULL LIT
TLE FREND AN
D TAME PLA
YFELOW AND
SUFFERER
C. H.

There was not room for the whole name, but, as I told my fellow-mourners
when I read the inscription to them, since we all knew it, the omission
was of no consequence. I could have wished that the slate had broken
straight, so that the inscription would have gone in better. However,
one cannot control circumstance when it takes the shape of a fracture.

Within twenty-four hours after Caspar Hauser's decease he was succeeded
by Bay. His name in its entirety, was Baffin's Bay. The alliterative
unctuousness of the title pleased me, as Mary 'Liza pronounced it
smoothly in her geography lesson, the day on which Hamilcar, the
carriage driver, drove over a young "old hare" in the road, and knocked
one of the poor thing's eyes out. It was taken up for dead, but
presently began to kick, and the ownership reverted to me. It lived a
week, and for hours at a time was so nearly comfortable as to eat
sparingly of milk, lettuce, cabbage, and clover, with which I supplied
it lavishly twice a day. I likewise treated the wounded eye with
balsam-capeiva and balm of Gilead ointment, sovereign appliances for the
bruises and cut fingers of that generation. A lemon box, with slats
nailed across the front by faithful Barratier, was the hospital in which
I laid Bay up for repairs. Him, too, I carried daily into the garden,
for change of air. He condescended to approve of the parsley patch,
limping through it as gracefully as the long tape tied to his right hind
leg would allow.

When, upon the third day of his residence in civilized quarters, he had
a convulsion in the very middle of the parsley patch, I thought it a
playful antic, and was amused and gratified thereat. The second time
this happened, James, the gardener, chanced to witness the performance
and informed me, brutally, that "that old hyar had throwed a fit, and
was boun' to die 'fore long.

"That 'ar lick on de side o' de hade done de bizness fur him, sure. De
brain am injerred. Mighty easy thing fur to injer a Molly Cottontail's
brain. He ain't got much, an' hit lies close to de top o' de hade."

For forty-eight hours before Bay died, the spasms were distressingly
frequent, but I would not have him killed. James might be wrong. Good
nursing and plenty of fresh air might bring my patie