Mrs. B. So I have heard, loved one. (Starting up.) Come, CHARLEY, we must be off at once!  The GOLDHARTS!  If they catch us, she is sure to ask me to visit some of her sick poor!

B. And he to beg me to subscribe to an orphanage or a hospital!  Here, take your prayer-book, or people won’t know that we have come from church!

    [Exeunt hurriedly.

* * * * *

HOMO SAPIENS.

(A QUESTION FOR THE NEXT ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSEMBLY.)

["When we consider the vast amount of time comprised in the Tertiary period ... the chances that man as at present constituted, should be a survivor from that period seem remote, and against the species Homo Sapiens having existed in Miocene times almost incalculable.”—­Address of the President of the Anthropological Section, Dr. John Evans, at the Leeds Meeting of the British Association.]

  When then did Homo Sapiens first appear? 
    Upon whose speculations shall we bottom us? 
  Contemporary he with the cave bear,
    But hardly with the earliest hippopotamus. 
  The happy Eocene beheld him not;
    That cheerful epoch when a morning ramble
  Among the mammoths, without gun or shot,
    Must have been such a truly sportive scramble. 
  The pleasant Pliocene preceded him. 
    Apparently, poor bare, belated Homo;
  His spectre seems to haunt, despondent, dim,
    Lakes—­how unlike Killarney, Wenham, Como!—­
  Where dens called Dwellings may have left some trace. 
    Before “quarternary times “—­whatever they were—­
  Homo appears not to have shown his face. 
    And then its features far from gracefully gay were. 
  So EVANS, who the mystery of Man’s birth
    Into our Cosmos carefully unravels. 
  He seems to view with sceptical calm mirth,
    Remains of Man among the river gravels. 
  Well, we’ll relinquish Tertiary man,
    Without immoderate grief, or lasting anguish. 
  The Pliocene, if we can grasp its plan,
    Would seem an epoch when our race would languish. 
  The skeletons, cut animal bones, and flints,
    Supposed to prove his presence, let’s abandon;
  But on some subjects we should like some hints;
    When did he come, and what has Sapient Man done
  To justify his advent?  Take him now,
    Apart from retrospection prehistoric,
  What is the being of the lifted brow
    Doing at present?  Strange phantasmagoric
  Pictures of his proceedings flit before
    The vision of alert imagination;
  Playing the brute, buffoon, “bounder,” or bore,
    In every climate, and in every nation!
  Homo—­here wasting half his hard-earned gains
    Upon Leviathan Fleets and Mammoth Armies,
  Spending his boasted gifts of Tongue and Brains
    In Party spouting.  Swearing