We remember his weeping
at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his eldest treasure, and
wonder if he was an arrant humbug, or only a foolish, fond old man,
inclining morosely toward the former opinion. We don't seem to care much
about Sir Roland de Vaux, the celebrated geologist, whom we shall have
the privilege of meeting this evening. What are strata to us, when our
thoughts will not go lower than about _eight feet_ underground? We shall
be rather bored than otherwise by Dr. Sternhold, that eminent Christian
divine, who passes his leisure hours in proving St. Paul to have been an
unsound theologian and a weak dialectician. Why should Mr. Planet, the
intrepid traveler, be always inflicting Jerusalem upon us, as if no one
had ever visited the Holy Land before him? Our ancestors did so five
hundred years ago, and did not make half the fuss about it; and _they_
had a skirmish or two there worth speaking of, while we don't believe a
word of Planet's encounter with those three Arabs on the Hebron road.
Pooh! there's no more peril in traversing the Wilderness of Cades than
in going up to the Grands Mulets. We are not worthy of those
distinguished men, and would prefer the society of hard-riding Dick
Foley of the Blues.
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