THE BACHELOR.

THE BACHELOR (Homo Caelebs) is chiefly found in the temperate zone, but not always of temperate habits. Most of the specimens live in clubs and look very much like the common species (homo pater familias), from which, in many instances, he can only be distinguished by his habit of keeping late hours-up to the dawn of morning -when he tries to make a face as if he had his coffee and to talk early piety.

In the first stage of his existence it is impossible to distinguish the bachelor from the common species. He spells, studies grammar, crams big words without knowing their meaning-like ordinary mortals. He fights indiscriminately with his own species, burns firecrackers on the Fourth of July, falls in love; but here is an essential difference

he marries not one of his many first loves. Only when podagra or old age prevents him from going to the club, and he thus falls into a state of general demoralization, he flies sometimes to matrimony; but even then he does not marry, but is married.

During the time of his full vigor the bachelor gradually adopts the habits of the so-called regular life. He is an admirer of the sunrise, but is not an early riser himself. He admires the rise of the sun in going home or in stopping at a lamp-post, in whose embrace he sometimes apostrophizes the luminary of the young day, calling him Helios, Phoebus, and other bad names. The bachelor takes his coffee in bed; he then spends some time in arranging his locks in a peculiar economical way by making a small number of hairs go very far to cover a great surface of shining epidermis. In a later stage of his development this care is abandoned for the possession of a wig, and so for the morning hours remains only the sacred duty to communicate by rubbing the

skull, by means of a silken handkerchief, to a higher degree of polish, which nevertheless is modestly hidden under the wig when steps, especially those of a lady, are heard approaching the sanctum. The rest of the day is divided into two sections by the dinner, which performance is regularly and religiously attended to by every good bachelor.

The other sex of the bachelor is not yet discovered. There exists no female bachelor. Some biologists have supposed that the old maiden is a female bachelor in disguise. This is a dangerous and at the same time absurd error. There is a law of attraction, also called natural selection, pervading all sexual creation. But the bachelor, instead of being attracted, runs away from the old maiden; at the same time he proves by such action that with all her efforts she cannot be his natural mate. It is an error to consider the old maiden distinct from the species homo, because she would be the usual female of the species if she had

not been prevented to be so by circumstances over which she had no control; so her development became arrested and she remained in a kind of larval state.

In the later part of his existence the bachelor becomes an uncle. There is still some mystery about the propagation of the bachelor. Some scientists pretend that he propagates by eggs, which he lays, like the cuckoo of Europe, in other birds' nests. Others have observed that he propagates by a biological process called generatio æquivoca. At any rate, may the process take the one form or the other, his offspring is called "nephew." Of this commodity he generally possesses only one, to whom he delivers moral lectures in the morning and pays the debts after dinner. And the accomplishment of these two objects is the task which fills the later part of his existence and for which he has been especially created, namely, paying the debts of his nephew and trying to improve morals which do not exist.