onsiderable tired, for I've
been a workin' on him mighty hard to-day. He knows that he's done his
work for the night, and I wouldn't go in with him again for a
fifty-dollar bill, but I shall do it, seeing I've got such distinguished
company,' and he made a sweeping obeisance, comprehending the giant, the
dwarf, and my humble person.

'The performance was really quite remarkable; but I was more interested
in observing my fellow visitors. The dwarf looked up with her bright
little eyes, and the giant looked down with his great leaden ones, while
the bear jumped over the man's head, and pretended to fight him and hug
him, and finally, walking on his hind-feet, stooped down, and took his
head into the horrid cavern of those great jaws. Out of breath, and red
in the face, the enthusiastic operator wound up by plucking a handful of
long hair from the flank of the much-enduring creature, and presented it
to us, as a souvenir of our visit.'

'I say, when he had him in his mouth, it was 'bear and forbear,' wasn't
it?' put in that scapegrace, Tom, who is always doing something of the
sort.

'Silence! and don't interrupt the court, unless you can say something
better than that. Well, let me tell you, I have been in very genteel
society, without feeling any thing so human, so catholic, so
pantheistical, (in the right sense,) as I did in making one of that
queer company. The great lout of a giant, with not soul enough in him to
fill out his circumference; the sad little dwarf, with not room enough
for hers; the poor, patient, necromanted savage of a bear; the smart,
steely, grog-loving, praise-loving keeper; the curious, bookish,
indolent traveler. Expressions, all of the grand, never-weary
Life-Intention, how widely variant! yet all children, and equally
beloved, of the Infinite Father.

'In four of the five cases, it should seem, the creative energy had set
about to fashion its supposed ultimate and perfect work, and with what
result? At first blush, the failure seemed most conspicuous in my
companions, especially the big and the little one; but a small
introspection might, perhaps, have disclosed a deeper disappointment in
a nobler aim. The bear was the only success among us. He was perfect in
his line, though sadly at a disadvantage; ravished from his
forest-world, and bedeviled with alien civilization. And note (as that
splendid prig, Ruskin, would say) with what mathematical accuracy
nature, in her less ambitious essays,