ute you
with melody, but the jay harshly upbraids you from the edge of the
copse. Unhappy man! all the gentle and healing ministrations of nature
are denied you in punishment of your sin. You have broken the First
Commandment of the Natural Decalogue: you have labored!"

Awakening from my dream, I collected my few belongings, bade adieu to my
erring parents and departed out of that land, pausing at the grave of my
grandfather, who had been a priest, to take an oath that never again,
Heaven helping me, would I earn an honest penny.

How long I traveled I know not, but I came at last to a great city by
the sea, where I set up as a physician. The name of that place I do not
now remember, for such were my activity and renown in my new profession
that the Aldermen, moved by pressure of public opinion, altered it, and
thenceforth the place was known as the City of the Gone Away. It is
needless to say that I had no knowledge of medicine, but by securing the
service of an eminent forger I obtained a diploma purporting to have
been granted by the Royal Quackery of Charlatanic Empiricism at Hoodos,
which, framed in immortelles and suspended by a bit of _crepe_ to a
willow in front of my office, attracted the ailing in great numbers. In
connection with my dispensary I conducted one of the largest undertaking
establishments ever known, and as soon as my means permitted, purchased
a wide tract of land and made it into a cemetery. I owned also some very
profitable marble works on one side of the gateway to the cemetery, and
on the other an extensive flower garden. My Mourner's Emporium was
patronized by the beauty, fashion and sorrow of the city. In short, I
was in a very prosperous way of business, and within a year was able to
send for my parents and establish my old father very comfortably as a
receiver of stolen goods--an act which I confess was saved from the
reproach of filial gratitude only by my exaction of all the profits.

But the vicissitudes of fortune are avoidable only by practice of the
sternest indigence: human foresight cannot provide against the envy of
the gods and the tireless machinations of Fate. The widening circle of
prosperity grows weaker as it spreads until the antagonistic forces
which it has pushed back are made powerful by compression to resist and
finally overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my skill in medicine that
patients were brought to me from all the four quarters of the globe.
Burdensome inv