The Mammalia are also warm-blooded and breathe through lungs; but they differ from all other Vertebrates in their mode of reproduction, bringing forth living young which they nurse with milk.  Even in the lowest members of this highest group of the Vertebrates, at the head of which stands Man himself, looking heavenward it is true, but nevertheless rooted deeply in the Animal Kingdom, we have the dawning of those family relations, those intimate ties between parents and children, on which the whole social organization of the human race is based.  Man is the crowning work of God on earth; but though so nobly endowed, we must not forget that we are the lofty children of a race whose lowest forms lie prostrate within the water, having no higher aspiration than the desire for food; and we cannot understand the possible degradation and moral wretchedness of Man, without knowing that his physical nature is rooted in all the material characteristics that belong to his type and link him even with the Fish.  The moral and intellectual gifts that distinguish him from them are his to use or to abuse; he may, if he will, abjure his better nature and be Vertebrate more than Man.  He may sink as low as the lowest of his type, or he may rise to a spiritual height that will make that which distinguishes him from the rest far more the controlling element of his being than that which unites him with them.

LOVE AND SKATES.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART II.

CHAPTER VII.

WADE DOWN!

The hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to be done metaphorically, since it was done in the sight of all Dunderbunk.

He had divined a happy result, when he missed Bill Tarbox from the arena, and saw him a furlong away, hand in hand with his reconciled sweetheart.

“I envy you, Bill,” said he, “almost too much to put proper fervor into my congratulations.”

“Your time will come,” the foreman rejoined.

And says Belle, “I am sure there is a lady skating somewhere, and only waiting for you to follow her.”

“I don’t see her,” Wade replied, looking with a mock-grave face up and down and athwart the river.  “When you’ve all gone to dinner, I’ll prospect ten miles up and down and try to find a good matrimonial claim that’s not taken.”

“You will not come up to dinner?” Belle asked.

“I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holiday,” said Wade.  “I’ve sent Perry up for a luncheon.  Here he comes with it.  So I cede my quarter of your pie, Miss Belle, to a better fellow.”

“Oh!” cries Perry, coming up and bowing elaborately.  “Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, I believe.  Ah, yes!  Well, I will mention it up at Albany.  I am going to take my Guards up to call on the Governor.”

Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunderbunk boys, organized by him as the Purtett Guards, and taught to salute him as Generalissimo with military honors.