ering. True,
it may be best that you should do this. If it was but a cumberer of
the ground, tear it up, root and branch, and plant in its stead the
seeds of that tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
But such things are done with circumspection,--not as unto man. If you
are gay and jovial about it, if you feel no darts of torture flashing
through be fastnesses of your life, do not flatter yourself that you
are making radical changes. You are only pulling up pig-weed to set
out smart-weed, and the less you say about it the better.

Now Halicarnassus is really just as Orthodox as I. He would not lie or
steal any quicker than I. He would not willingly sacrifice one jot or
tittle of his faith, and yet he is always startling you with small
heresies. He is like a calf tied to a tree in the orchard by a long
rope. In the exuberance of his glee Bossy starts from the post, tail
up, in a hand gallop. You would think, from the way he sets out, that
he was going to race around the whole orchard, and probably he thinks
he is himself. But by the time he is fairly under full headway, his
rope tightens up with a jerk, and away he goes heels over head. The
only difference is, that Halicarnassus knows the length of his tether,
and always fetches up in time to escape an overturn; but other people
do not know it, and they imagine he is going pell-mell into infidelity.
Now I was determined to have none of this trash in a steamboat. One
has no desire to encounter superfluous risks in a country where life
and limb are held on so uncertain a tenure as in this. There are quite
chances enough of shipwreck without having any Jonahs aboard. Besides,
in point of the fine arts, heterodoxy is worse than puns. So I headed
him off at the first onset. But I should not have been so entirely
successful in the attempt had I not been assisted by a pair of birds
who came to distract his and our attention from a neighboring thicket.
They wheeled--the gentle, graceful, sly, tantalizing things--in circles
and ellipses, now skimming along the surface of the water, now swooping
away in great smooth curves, then darting off in headlong flight and
pursuit. "My kingdom for a gun!" exclaimed Halicarnassus with amateur
ardor.

"I am glad you have no gun," said compassionate Grande. "Why should
you kill them?"

"Do not be alarmed," I said, soothingly, "a distaff would be as deadly
in his hands."

"Do you speak by the book, Omphale?"