Then, too, I have searched in vain for anything like it in ancient Irish poetry, thinking that my progenitor’s name might have been therein embalmed.  ’The stony science’—­mind you—­reveals to us the former existence of the huge reptile, the fragmentary, mighty mastodon, and, imperfect, the mail-clad fish.  But, wonder of wonders, we find the whole insect preserved in that fossil gum amber.  And even so in verse, characters are preserved for all time, that could not make their mark in history, and that had none of the elements of an earthly immortality.  Did I wish immortality I would choose a poet for my friend;—­an In Memoriam is worth all the records of the dry chronicler.

But, it is not with the root of the family tree that you have to do, but with the twig Myself.

As for my physique,—­I am not like the scripture personage who beheld his face in a glass, and straightway forgot what manner of man he was.  I have, on the contrary, a very distinct recollection of my face; suffice it to say, that, had I Rafaelle’s pencil, I would not, like him, employ it on my own portrait.

And my life—­the circumstances which have influenced, or rather created its currents, have been trifling; not that it has had no powerful currents; it is said that the equilibrium of the whole ocean could be destroyed by a single mollusk or coralline,—­but my life has been an uneventful one.  I never met with an adventure, never even had a hair-breadth escape,—­yes, I did, too, have one hair-breadth escape.  I once just grazed matrimony.  The truth is, I fell in love, and was sinking with Falstaff’s ‘alacrity,’ when I was fished out; but somehow I slipt off the hook—­fortunately, however, was left on shore.  By the way, the best way to get out of love is to be drawn out by the matrimonial hook.  One of Holmes’ characters wished to change a vowel of the verb to love, and conjugate it—­I have forgotten how far.  Where two set out to conjugate together the verb to love in the first person plural, it is well if they do not, before the honey-moon is over, get to the present-perfect, indicative.  Alas!  I have thus far, in the first person singular, conjugated too many verbs, among them to enjoy.  As for to be, I have come to the balancing in my mind of the question that so perplexed Hamlet—­’To be, or not to be.’  For, with all the natural cheerfulness of my disposition, I can not help sometimes looking on the dark side of life.  But there is no use in setting down my gloomy reflections,—­all have them.  We are all surrounded by an atmosphere of misery, pressing on us fifteen pounds to the square inch, so evenly and constantly that we know not its fearful weight.  To change the figure.  Have you ever thought how much misery one life can hold in solution?  Each year, as it flows into it, adds to it a heaviness, a weight of woe, as the rivers add salts to the ocean.  I do not refer to the most unhappy, but to all.  Some one says,—­