earth as eagerly as dogs digging for marmots.  Before nightfall the surface of the greater part of the cemetery had been upturned; every grave had been explored to the bottom and thousands of men were tearing away at the interspaces with as furious a frenzy as exhaustion would permit.  As night came on torches were lighted, and in the sinister glare these frantic mortals, looking like a legion of fiends performing some unholy rite, pursued their disappointing work until they had devastated the entire area.  But not a body did they find—­not even a coffin.

The explanation is exceedingly simple.  An important part of my income had been derived from the sale of cadavres to medical colleges, which never before had been so well supplied, and which, in added recognition of my services to science, had all bestowed upon me diplomas, degrees and fellowships without number.  But their demand for cadavres was unequal to my supply:  by even the most prodigal extravagances they could not consume the one-half of the products of my skill as a physician.  As to the rest, I had owned and operated the most extensive and thoroughly appointed soapworks in all the country.  The excellence of my “Toilet Homoline” was attested by certificates from scores of the saintliest theologians, and I had one in autograph from Badelina Fatti the most famous living soaprano.

THE MAJOR’S TALE

In the days of the Civil War practical joking had not, I think, fallen into that disrepute which characterizes it now.  That, doubtless, was owing to our extreme youth—­men were much younger than now, and evermore your very young man has a boisterous spirit, running easily to horse-play.  You cannot think how young the men were in the early sixties!  Why, the average age of the entire Federal Army was not more than twenty-five; I doubt if it was more than twenty-three, but not having the statistics on that point (if there are any) I want to be moderate:  we will say twenty-five.  It is true a man of twenty-five was in that heroic time a good deal more of a man than one of that age is now; you could see that by looking at him.  His face had nothing of that unripeness so conspicuous in his successor.  I never see a young fellow now without observing how disagreeably young he really is; but during the war we did not think of a man’s age at all unless he happened to be pretty well along in life.  In that case one could not help it, for the unloveliness of age assailed the human countenance then much earlier than now; the result, I suppose, of hard service—­perhaps, to some extent, of hard drink, for, bless my soul! we did shed the blood of the grape and the grain abundantly during the war.  I remember thinking General Grant, who could not have been more than forty, a pretty well preserved old chap, considering his habits.  As to men of middle age—­say from fifty to sixty—­why, they all looked fit to personate the Last of the Hittites, or the Madagascarene Methuselah, in a museum.  Depend upon it, my friends, men of that time were greatly younger than men are to-day, but looked much older.  The change is quite remarkable.