other forms, after the soul has passed to heavenly spheres to enjoy the
blessings of immortal life.

* * * * *


CHIP DARTMOUTH.


It is wonderful how Nature provides for the taking off and keeping down
of her monsters,--creatures that carry things only by force or fraud:
your foxes, wolves, and bears; your anacondas, tigers, and lions; and
your cunning or ferocious men of prey, of whom they are the types.
Storms may and must now and then rage and ravage, volcanoes must have
their destructive fits, and the darkness must do its mean and tyrannical
things while men are asleep; but calmness and sunshine triumph
immeasurably on the whole. Of the cubs of iniquity, only here and there
an individual escapes the crebrous perils of adolescence, develops into
the full beast, and occupies a sublime place in history; whereas the
genial men of sunshine, plenty as the fair days of summer, pass quietly
over from the ruby of life's morning to the sapphire of its evening, too
numerous to be written of or distinctly remembered. There are, it is
quite true, enough biographies of such in existence to read the world to
sleep by for ages. It can hardly keep awake at all, except over lives of
the other sort; hence, one of great and successful villany is a prize
for the scribe. In the dearth of such, let us content ourselves with
briefly noticing one of the multitude of abortive cubs, its villany
nipped--as Nature is wont to nip it--in the promising bud of its
tenderness. Many a flourishing young rogue suddenly disappears, and the
world never knows how or why. But it shall know, if it will heed our