Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/60

 the clubs! Think, when it came to our own turn, of the numbers of Gourds we should have raised, outlived, buried, but, alas! not forgotten.

"A fine old man, sir!" said one of the best judges of human nature that ever fathered a proverb. "There's no such thing. If his head or his heart had been worth anything, they would have worn him out years ago!"

"You have got off the subject as usual," objected Bones, "and are trenching on a topic of which you are far less qualified to speak than myself What do you know about the duration of life, the ceaseless wear-and-tear, the gradual decay, the last flickers of the candle, leaping up, time after time, with delusive strength, until it goes out once for all? You can tell where Noah was, but do you know where the candle went to when it left the great sea-captain