the patriots had finished cutting off everybody else's head, then the reign of mutual tenderness would begin; the week—inestimable privilege!—would hold ten days instead of seven; and Frimaire and Floréal and Messidor would prove to the listening earth that the very names of past months had sunk into merited oblivion. Father Faber says that a sense of humor is a great help in the spiritual life; it is an absolute necessity in the temporal. Had the Convention possessed even the faintest perception of the ridiculous, this friendly instinct would have lowered their sublime heads from the stars, stung them into practical issues, and moderated the absurd delusions of the hour.
At present, however, the new disciples of "earnestness" are trying hard to persuade us that we are too humorous, and that it is the spirit of universal mockery which stifles all our nobler and finer emotions. We would like to believe them, but unhappily it is only to exceedingly strenuous souls that this lawless fun seems to manifest itself. The rest of us, searching cheerfully enough, fail to discover its traces. If we are seldom capable of any
