not to be revived.
Like the lightning, I don't strike twice in the same place. No; the
project upon which I am now engaged is one so eminently practical, so
free from all that is visionary, that you will wonder how I thought of
it. That project is a PANORAMA OF AFRICA!"

CHAPTER V.

THE PANORAMA OF AFRICA

The three bachelors concurred in the opinion that the idea was a good
one; but Marcus Wilkeson suggested that the field was too large.

"I thought you would like the general proposition," said Tiffles. "But,
bless you, Mark! I don't mean to paint the whole continent, from stem to
stern, so to speak; only the undiscovered part of Central Africa--say
from Cape Guardafui on the east to the Bight of Benin on the west."

"But how the deuce," asked Matthew Maltboy, "are you, or anybody else,
going to paint what has not been discovered?"

Tiffles could hardly suppress a smile at the simplicity of the question.
"Why," said he, "that's easy enough. Don't all the geographers tell us
that the interior of Africa is made up, so far as known, of alternate
deserts and jungles, like the patches on a coverlet? Very well. I
conform to this general principle of the continent. I put half of the
canvas in desert, and the rest in jungle, and I can't be far out of the
way. Take the idea?"

"Perfectly," said Matthew Maltboy; "but if you have nothing but
alternate, deserts and jungles, it strikes me your panorama will be a
little monotonous. Perhaps I am wrong." (Maltboy always offered
suggestions timidly.)

"I have thought of that, and guarded against it. I shall fill the
jungles with animated life--elephants, lions, tigers, panthers,
leopards, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, giraffes, zebras, crocodiles,
boa constrictors, and other specimens of natural history indigenous to
that delightful region."

"Good!" cried Overtop; "and if you will take a hint from me, you will
show your elephants in the act of being caught by natives, or engaged in
combats with each other; your lions fighting your tigers or your
rhinoceroses; your hippopotamuses engaged in death struggles with your
crocodiles; and your boa constrictors gobbling down your natives--or, if
that is objectionable on the score of humanity, your monkeys."

"Thank you for the hint; but the expense, and the necessity of
completing the panorama at an early day, put it out of the question. To
paint accurate representations of these animals engaged in their
innocent sports, would