UNOPENED PARCELS. 119

What do you say now? Remember this when
you are inclined to talk of the common walnut one
eats as if it was commonplace, and grow rapturous
over the little bit of human ingenuity displayed
in stuffing a very soft piece of leather neatly into
the convolutions of an empty walnut-shell....
I wonder, by the way, Honor, how many walnut-
trees you have eaten up in the course of your short
life !” |

The abrupt joke seemed to lighten the serious-
ness of my surprise, and my father concluded with
a farewell kiss :—“ These germs are among the
thousands of unopened parcels in the natural
world, and they shadow out the others !”