blanket round me. I've heard that this is the favourite
hour of the suicide, and I see that I've been tailing off in the
direction of melancholy myself. Let me wind up on a lighter chord by
quoting Cullingworth's latest article. I must tell you that he is
still inflamed by the idea of his own paper, and his brain is in full
eruption, sending out a perpetual stream of libellous paragraphs,
doggerel poems, social skits, parodies, and articles. He brings them
all to me, and my table is already piled with them. Here is his latest,
brought up to my room after he had undressed. It was the outcome of some
remarks I had made about the difficulty which our far-off descendants
may have in determining what the meaning is of some of the commonest
objects of our civilisation, and as a corollary how careful we should be
before we become dogmatic about the old Romans or Egyptians.

"At the third annual meeting of the New Guinea Archaeological Society
a paper was read upon recent researches on the supposed site of London,
together with some observations upon hollow cylinders in use among
the ancient Londoners. Several examples of these metallic cylinders
or tubings were on exhibition in the hall, and were passed round for
inspection among the audience. The learned lecturer prefaced his remarks
by observing that on account of the enormous interval of time which
separated them from the days when London was a flourishing city, it
behoved them to be very guarded in any conclusions to which they might
come as to the habits of the inhabitants. Recent research appeared to
have satisfactorily established the fact that the date of the final fall
of London was somewhat later than that of the erection of the Egyptian
Pyramids. A large building had recently been unearthed near the dried-up
bed of the river Thames; and there could be no question from existing
records that this was the seat of the law-making council among the
ancient Britons--or Anglicans, as they were sometimes called. The
lecturer proceeded to point out that the bed of the Thames had been
tunnelled under by a monarch named Brunel, who is supposed by some
authorities to have succeeded Alfred the Great. The open spaces of
London, he went on to remark, must have been far from safe, as the
bones of lions, tigers, and other extinct forms of carnivora had
been discovered in the Regent's Park. Having briefly referred to the
mysterious structures known as 'pillar-boxes,' which are scattere