disposes.

David had left to-morrow's dangers for to-morrow to care for. It seemed
to promise him that he must be in arms against Saul. But, unlike us in
our eagerness to anticipate our conflicts of duty, David _waited_.

And the Lord delivered him. While they were singing by the brookside,
the proud noblemen of the Philistine army had forced an interview with
their king; and, in true native Philistine arrogance, insisted that
"this Hebrew" and his men should be sent away.

With the light of morning the king sent for the minstrel, and
courteously dismissed him, because "the princes of the Philistines have
said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.'"

So David marched his men to Ziklag.

And David and Homer never met on earth again.

NOTE.--This will be a proper place to print the following note,
which I was obliged to write to a second cousin of Miss Dryasdust
after she had read the MS. of the article above:--

"DEAR MADAM:--I thank you for your kind suggestion, in returning my
paper, that it involves a piece of impossible history. You inform
me, that, 'according to the nomenclatured formulas and homophonic
analogies of Professor Gouraud, of never-to-be-forgotten memory, "A
NEEDLE is less useful for curing a DEAF HEAD, than for putting
ear-rings into a _Miss's lily-ears_"; and that this shows that the
second king of Judah, named David (or Deaf-head) began to reign in
1055 B.C., and died 1040 B.C.'; and further, that, according to the
same authority, '_Homer flourished_ when the Greeks were fond of
his POETRY'; which, being interpreted, signifies that he flourished
in 914 B.C., and, consequently, could have had no more to do with
David than to plant ivy over his grave, in some of his voyages to
Phoenicia.

"I thank you for the suggestion. I knew the unforgetting professor;
and I do not doubt that he remembered David and Homer as his near
friends. But, of course, to such a memory, a century or two might
easily slip aside.

"Now, did you look up Clement? And did you not forget the
Arundelian Marbles? For, if you will take the long estimates, you
will find that some folks think Homer lived as long ago as the year
1150, and some that it was as 'short ago' as 850. And some set
David as long ago as 1170, and some bring him down to a hundred and
fifty years later. These are the long