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poor mortals. I thought I would improve the occasion and learn something, so I asked him:⁠— “What about the flies these times?” He smiled on me in quite a superior sort of way⁠—such a smile as would have become the face of Malvolio⁠—as he answered me:⁠— “The fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature; its wings are typical of the aerial powers of the psychic faculties. The ancients did well when they typified the soul as a butterfly!” I thought I would push his analogy to its utmost logically, so I said quickly:⁠— “Oh, it is a soul you are after now, is it?” His madness foiled his reason, and a puzzled look spread over his face as, shaking his head with a decision which I had but seldom seen in him, he said:⁠— “Oh, no, oh no! I want no souls. Life is all I want.” Here he brightened up; “I am pretty indifferent about it at present. Life is all right; I have all I want. You must get a new patient, doctor, if you wish to study zoöphagy!” This puzzled me a little, so I drew him on:⁠— “Then you command life; you are a god, I suppose?” He smiled with an ineffably benign superiority. “Oh no! Far be it from me to arrogate to myself the attributes of the Deity. I am not even concerned in His especially spiritual doings. If I may state my intellectual position I am, so far as concerns things purely terrestrial, somewhat in the position which Enoch occupied spiritually!” This was a poser to me. I could not at the moment recall Enoch’s appositeness; so I had to ask a simple question, though I felt that by so doing I was lowering myself in the eyes of the lunatic:⁠— “And why with Enoch?” “Because he walked with God.” I could not see the analogy, but did not like to admit it; so I harked back to what he had denied:⁠— “So you don’t care about life and you don’t want souls. Why not?” I put my