class called ‘Vertebrata.’  So does the snake, the monkey, the lizard and crocodile, and many other low and mean animals.—­Have these creatures the reasoning faculties of man?  Do they walk erect like man?  Have they feet, hands, legs, arms, hair upon their heads, or beards upon their faces?  Do they speak languages and congregate and worship at the altar?” (!!)—­“Those who are ambitious of such relations, may plant their heraldic coat-of-arms in the serpent, the lizard, the crocodile, or the monkey, but we disclaim such relationship—­we do not think it good taste or good morals to place the fair daughters of Eve on a level with horrid and hideous animals, simply from some apparent similarity, which we are certain never existed.”]

The belligerent pundit who has flung in the face of peaceful geologists this octavo camouflet of his scientific lucubrations professes to have scoured the surface and ravaged the bottom (in a suit of patent sub-marine Scriptural armor) of a no less abysmal subject than the cryptology of Genesis,—­to have undermined with his sapping intellect and blown up with his explosive wisdom the walled secrets of time and eternity, carrying away with him in the shape of plunder a whole cargo of the plans and purposes of the Omnipotent in the Creation.  I have not the least doubt, if he were respectfully approached and interrogated upon the subject, he would answer with the greatest ease and accuracy the famous question with which Dean Swift posed the theological tailor.  The man who can tell us all about the institution of the law of gravity, how the inspired prophet thought and felt while writing his history, and who knows everything respecting “affinity and attraction when they were in Creation’s womb,” could not hesitate a moment to measure an arch-angel for a pair of breeches.—­But I was talking of funerals.

* * * * *

A friend once assured me that the heartiest laugh of which he was ever guilty on a solemn occasion occurred at a funeral.  A trusty Irish servant, who had lived with him for many years, and for whom he had great affection, died suddenly at his house.  As he was attending the funeral in the Catholic burial-place, and stood with his wife and children listening to the service which the priest was reading, his heart filled with grief and his eyes moist with tears, the inscription on a gravestone just before him happened to attract his attention.  It was this_:—­“Gloria in Excelsis Deo!_ Patrick Donahoe died July 12. 18—.”  Now the exclamation-point after "Deo" and the statement of the fact of Mr. D.’s demise following immediately thereafter made the epitaph to read, “Glory to God in the highest!  Patrick is dead.”  This, which at another time would perhaps have caused no more than a smile, struck him as irresistibly funny, and drove in a moment every trace of sadness from his face and sorrow from his heart,—­to give place to violent emotions of another nature, which his utmost exertions could not conceal.