n.

"Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan,
again looking off in surprise. "Same voice as before, ain't it? Strange
sort of dreamy man, that. Which is his berth, pray?"

"Never mind _him_, sir," said the old man anxiously, "but tell me truly,
did you, indeed, read from the book just now?"

"I did," with changed air, "and gall and wormwood it is to me, a truster
in man; to me, a philanthropist."

"Why," moved, "you don't mean to say, that what you repeated is really
down there? Man and boy, I have read the good book this seventy years,
and don't remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it," rising
earnestly, and going round to him.

"There it is; and there--and there"--turning over the leaves, and
pointing to the sentences one by one; "there--all down in the 'Wisdom of
Jesus, the Son of Sirach.'"

"Ah!" cried the old man, brightening up, "now I know. Look," turning the
leaves forward and back, till all the Old Testament lay flat on one
side, and all the New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers
he supported vertically the portion between, "look, sir, all this to the
right is certain truth, and all this to the left is certain truth, but
all I hold in my hand here is apocrypha."

"Apocrypha?"

"Yes; and there's the word in black and white," pointing to it. "And
what says the word? It says as much as 'not warranted;' for what do
college men say of anything of that sort? They say it is apocryphal. The
word itself, I've heard from the pulpit, implies something of uncertain
credit. So if your disturbance be raised from aught in this apocrypha,"
again taking up the pages, "in that case, think no more of it, for it's
apocrypha."

"What's that about the Apocalypse?" here, a third time, came from the
berth.

"He's seeing visions now, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan, once more
looking in the direction of the interruption. "But, sir," resuming, "I
cannot tell you how thankful I am for your reminding me about the
apocrypha here. For the moment, its being such escaped me. Fact is, when
all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing. The uncanonical part
should be bound distinct. And, now that I think of it, how well did
those learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of Sirach. I
never read anything so calculated to destroy man's confidence in man.
This son of Sirach even says--I saw it but just now: 'Take heed of thy
friends;' not, observe, thy seeming friends,