ow of the hallowed
remains over which they bound with glowing, happy hearts? Some little
Peterkin may find a bleached remnant of their heroism, and the Caspar of
that day will surely say, "It was a famous victory." Madam, you and I
would be content to have the children of the future gambol above us, if
we could know their blithesome hearts were emancipated from thraldom by
such deposit of our poor bones under the verdant sod. The stateliest
mausoleum of crowned kings, the Pyramids that mark the resting-place of
Egypt's ancient rulers, are not so proud a monument as the rich, green
herbage that springs from the remains of a fallen hero, and hides the
little feet that trip over him, freed by his fall. Let us rejoice, then,
Madam, that we belong to that nobler race, which no curious explorer of
the far future will rank with Megatheria and Ichthyosauri, or any of the
soulless creatures of past geologic ages.

Backbone is a most important article, Tommy. Professor Wyman will tell
you that backbone is the distinctive characteristic of the highest order
of animals on this earth. When your father used to pry into all sorts of
books, years ago, he found out that he belonged to the Vertebrata,
which, Anglicized, meant backboned creatures. And yet do you know that
there are crowds of men and women whose framework would puzzle the good
Professor, with all his learning,--people who are utterly destitute of
that same essential article? Carry him the first old bone you may find,
and, I warrant you, he will tell, in a jiffy, to what manner of creature
it belonged. But wouldn't he look bewildered upon a cranium and a pelvis
which perambulated the earth without any osseous connection? Backbone is
the grand fulcrum on which human life moves its inertia. But wouldn't
Professor Rogers, _facile princeps_ in physics, rub his nose, and look
in wonder, to see peripatetic motion induced without a sign of a fulcrum
for the lever of life to rest upon? And yet these anomalies are
plentiful. They are everywhere,--in houses, in churches, in stores, in
town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,--extensive
sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the
world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear
and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep
into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them,
and quake at the thunder of his tread. They cling, trem