B._ So I have heard, loved one. (_Starting up._) Come, CHARLEY,
we must be off at once! The GOLDHARTS! If they catch us, _she_ is sure
to ask me to visit some of her sick poor!
_B._ And _he_ to beg me to subscribe to an orphanage or a hospital!
Here, take your prayer-book, or people won't know that we have come
from church!
[_Exeunt hurriedly._
* * * * *
HOMO SAPIENS.
(_A QUESTION FOR THE NEXT ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSEMBLY._)
["When we consider the vast amount of time comprised in
the Tertiary period ... the chances that man as at present
constituted, should be a survivor from that period seem
remote, and against the species _Homo Sapiens_ having existed
in Miocene times almost incalculable."--_Address of the
President of the Anthropological Section, Dr. John Evans, at
the Leeds Meeting of the British Association_.]
When then did _Homo Sapiens_ first appear?
Upon whose speculations shall we bottom us?
Contemporary he with the cave bear,
But hardly with the earliest hippopotamus.
The happy Eocene beheld him not;
That cheerful epoch when a morning ramble
Among the mammoths, without gun or shot,
Must have been such a truly sportive scramble.
The pleasant Pliocene preceded him.
Apparently, poor bare, belated _Homo_;
His spectre seems to haunt, despondent, dim,
Lakes--how unlike Killarney, Wenham, Como!--
Where dens called Dwellings may have left some trace.
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