s, and with them a yet diviner hope.

Perchance when all is said, so we think to ourselves, man _is_ something
more than an animal. Perchance he has known the past, the far past, and
will know the future, the far, far future. Perchance the dream is true,
and he does indeed possess what for convenience is called an immortal
soul, that may manifest itself in one shape or another; that may sleep
for ages, but, waking or sleeping, still remains itself, indestructible
as the matter of the Universe.

An incident in the career of Mr. James Ebenezer Smith might well
occasion such reflections, were any acquainted with its details, which
until this, its setting forth, was not the case. Mr. Smith is a person
who knows when to be silent. Still, undoubtedly it gave cause for
thought to one individual--namely, to him to whom it happened. Indeed,
James Ebenezer Smith is still thinking over it, thinking very hard
indeed.

J. E. Smith was well born and well educated. When he was a good-looking
and able young man at college, but before he had taken his degree,
trouble came to him, the particulars of which do not matter, and he was
thrown penniless, also friendless, upon the rocky bosom of the world.
No, not quite friendless, for he had a godfather, a gentleman connected
with business whose Christian name was Ebenezer. To him, as a last
resource, Smith went, feeling that Ebenezer owed him something in return
for the awful appellation wherewith he had been endowed in baptism.

To a certain extent Ebenezer recognised the obligation. He did nothing
heroic, but he found his godson a clerkship in a bank of which he was
one of the directors--a modest clerkship, no more. Also, when he died a
year later, he left him a hundred pounds to be spent upon some souvenir.

Smith, being of a practical turn of mind, instead of adorning himself
with memorial jewellery for which he had no use, invested the hundred
pounds in an exceedingly promising speculation. As it happened, he was
not misinformed, and his talent returned to him multiplied by ten. He
repeated the experiment, and, being in a position to know what he was
doing, with considerable success. By the time that he was thirty he
found himself possessed of a fortune of something over twenty-five
thousand pounds. Then (and this shows the wise and practical nature of
the man) he stopped speculating and put out his money in such a fashion
that it brought him a safe and clear four per cent.

By