persisted, "by their short legs and long noses. Short legs to bring
'em near the grass, and long noses to poke under the rocks and get it."

"Yes, my boy, yes," said the Anakim pleasantly. "I O U 1"

"He hath made everything beautiful in his time," murmured Grande,
partly because, gazing at the distant prospect, she thought so, and
partly as a praiseworthy attempt, in her turn, to pluck us out of the
slough into which we had fallen.

"I have heard," said Halicarnassus, who is always lugging in little
scraps of information apropos to everything,--"I have been told that
Dr. Alexander was so great an admirer of the Proverbs of Solomon, that
he used to read them over every three months."

"I beg your pardon," I interposed, glad of the opportunity to correct
and humiliate him, "but that was not one of the Proverbs of Solomon."

"Who said it was?" asked the Grand Mogul, savagely.

"Nobody; but you thought it was when she said it," answered his
antagonist, coolly.

"And whose proverb is it, my Lady Superior?"

"It is in Ecclesiastes," I said.

"Well, Ecclesiastes is next door to Solomon. It's all one."
Halicarnassus can creep through the smallest knot-hole of any man of
his size it has ever been my lot to meet, provided there is anything on
the other side he wishes to get at. If there is not, and especially if
anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty
pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through.
By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle
himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his line of remark.

"But I really cannot say that I have been able to detect the excessive
superiority of Solomon's proverbs. If it were not for the name of it,
I think Sancho Panza's much better."

"Taisez-vous. Hold your tongue," I said, without mitigation. If there
is anything I cannot away with, it is trivial apostasy. I tolerate
latitudinarianism when it is hereditary. Where people's fathers and
mothers before them have been Pagans, and Catholics, and Mohammedans,
you don't blame THEM for being so. You regret their error, and strive
to lead them back into the right path; only they are not inflammatory.
But to have people go out from the faith of their fathers with malice
aforethought and their eyes open--well, that is not exactly what I mean
either. That is a sorrowful, but not necessarily an exasperating
thing. What I mean is this: I see pe