esting
it.

--A child naturally snaps at a thing as a dog does at his meat,--said the
Master.---If you think of it, we've all been quadrupeds. A child that
can only crawl has all the instincts of a four-footed beast. It carries
things in its mouth just as cats and dogs do. I've seen the little
brutes do it over and over again. I suppose a good many children would
stay quadrupeds all their lives, if they didn't learn the trick of
walking on their hind legs from seeing all the grown people walking in
that way.

--Do you accept Mr. Darwin's notions about the origin of the race?--said
I.

The Master looked at me with that twinkle in his eye which means that he
is going to parry a question.

--Better stick to Blair's Chronology; that settles it. Adam and Eve,
created Friday, October 28th, B. C. 4004. You've been in a ship for a
good while, and here comes Mr. Darwin on deck with an armful of sticks
and says, "Let's build a raft, and trust ourselves to that."

If your ship springs a leak, what would you do?

He looked me straight in the eyes for about half a minute.---If I heard
the pumps going, I'd look and see whether they were gaining on the leak
or not. If they were gaining I'd stay where I was.---Go and find out
what's the matter with that young woman.

I had noticed that the Young Girl--the storywriter, our Scheherezade, as
I called her--looked as if she had been crying or lying awake half the
night. I found on asking her,--for she is an honest little body and is
disposed to be confidential with me for some reason or other,--that she
had been doing both.

--And what was the matter now, I questioned her in a semi-paternal kind
of way, as soon as I got a chance for a few quiet words with her.

She was engaged to write a serial story, it seems, and had only got as
far as the second number, and some critic had been jumping upon it, she
said, and grinding his heel into it, till she couldn't bear to look at
it. He said she did not write half so well as half a dozen other young
women. She did n't write half so well as she used to write herself. She
hadn't any characters and she had n't any incidents. Then he went to
work to show how her story was coming out, trying to anticipate
everything she could make of it, so that her readers should have nothing
to look forward to, and he should have credit for his sagacity in
guessing, which was nothing so very wonderful, she seemed to think.
Things she had merely