when I had spent my life in fining their gold and polishing their graven-work, that they were still vessels for the Master’s use—I only the Butler—the sweetness and the spirit with which they brimmed all belonging to His lips who tasted bitterness for me. Then, if seeking to drain another’s wine, I raised the chalice to my lips and found it gall, or felt it steal into my old veins to poison the heart and paralyze the hand which had kept it from the Master, what further good would there be for me in the world? Who doesn’t know, in some friend's house, a closet containing that worst of skeletons—the skeleton which, in becoming naked, grim and ghastly, tears its way through our own flesh and blood?
To be an uncle is a different kind of thing. There you have nothing of the excitement of responsibility to shake your judgment. That's what makes us bachelor uncles so much better judges of what’s good for children and their fathers and mothers. We know that nobody will blame us if our nephews unjoint their knuckles or cut their fingers off; so we give them five-bladed knives and boxing gloves. This involves getting thanked at the time, which is pleasant; and if no catastrophe occurs, when they have grown stout and ingenious, with what calm satisfaction we hear people say, “See what a pretty windmill the child's whittled out with Uncle Ned's birthday present!” or, “That boy’s grown an inch round the chest since you set him spar-
