CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



to his grave. He was buried not by our hands, but 

 by the hands of one whose tender and manly heart 

 loved the old, blind, deaf, staggering creature to the 

 very last for such in his fourteenth year he truly 

 was a sad and sorry sight to see, to them who re- 

 membered the glory of his stately and majestic years. 

 One day he crawled with a moan-like whine to our 

 brother's feet, and expired. Reader, young, bright, 

 and beautiful though thou be remember all flesh is 

 dust! 



This is an episode a tale, in itself complete, yet 

 growing out of, and appertaining to, the main plot of 

 Epic or Article. You will recollect we were speaking 

 of ducks, teals, and widgeons and we come now to 

 the next clause of the verse wild geese and swans. 



Some people's geese are all swans; but so far from 

 that being the case with ours sad and sorry are we 

 to say it now all our swans are geese. But in our 

 buoyant boyhood, all God's creatures were to our eyes 

 just as God made them; and there was ever espe- 

 cially birds a tinge of beauty over them all. What 

 an inconceivable difference distance to the imagi- 

 nation, between the nature of a tame and a wild 

 goose! Aloft in heaven, themselves in night invisible, 

 the gabble of a cloud of wild geese is sublime. Whence 

 comes it whither goes it for what end, and by what 

 power impelled? Reason sees not into the darkness of 

 [86] 



