And he advised me strong—­“Not to make a luny and a idiot of myself.”

And sez he, “Dum it all, why do they call it the works of man?  There is as many wimmen amongst them dum skeletons as men, I’ll bet a cent.”

Wall, we went into another room and found a very interestin’ exhibit—­the measurements of heads:  long-headed folks and short-headed ones; and measurements of children’s heads who wuz educated, and the heads of savage children, showin’ the influence that moral trainin’ has on the brains of boys and girls.

Wall, it would take weeks to examine all we see there—­the remains of the Aborigines, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians.  We could see by them relics how they lived—­their religions, their domestic life, their arts, and their industries.

And then we see photographs by the hullsale of mounds and ruins from all over the world.

Why, we see so many pictures of ruins, that Josiah said that “he felt almost ruined.”

And I sez, “That must come from the inside, Josiah.  It hadn’t ort to make you feel so.”

And then we see all sorts of things to illustrate the games that these old ruined folks used to play, and their religions they believed in—­idols, and clay altars, and things; and once, when I wuz a-tryin’ to look calm at the very meanest-lookin’ idol that I ever laid eyes on,

Sez Josiah, “The folks that would try to worship such a lookin’ thing as that ort to be ruined.”

And I whispered back, “If the secret things that folks worship to-day could be materialized, they would look enough sight worse than this.”  Sez I, “How would the mammon of Greed look carved in stun, or the beast of Intemperance?”

“Oh!” sez he, “bring in your dum temperance talk everywhere, will you?  I should think we wuz in a bad enough place here to let your ears rest, anyway.”

“Wall,” sez I, “then don’t run down folks that couldn’t answer back for ten thousand years.”

But truly we wuz in a bad place, if humbliness is bad, for them idols did beat all, and then there wuz a almost endless display of amulets, charms, totems, and other things that they used to carry on their religious meetin’s with, or what they called religion.

And then we see some strange clay altars containin’ cremated human bein’s.

Here Josiah hunched me agin—­

“You feel dretful cut up if you hear any one speak aginst these old creeters, but what do you think of that?” sez he, a-pintin’ to the burnt bodies.  Sez he, “Most likely them bodies wuz victims that wuz killed on their dum altars—­dum ’em!”

“Yes,” sez I, “but we of the nineteenth century slay two hundred thousand victims every year on the altar of Mammon, and Intemperance.”

“Keep it up, will you—­keep a preachin’!” sez he, and his tone wuz bitter and voyalent in the extreme.

And here he turned his back on me and went to examine some of the various games of all countries, such as cards, dice, dominoes, checkers, etc., etc.