Long ago, this girl had taken the fever in Egypt, and died of it; but before she died she wrote a book of poems and verses, which, though long forgotten--if ever known--by the multitude, is still treasured and re-read by some, and of these Miss Nitocris was one.

Just now the book was open at the hundred and forty-third page, on which there is a portion of a poem entitled _Natural Selection_.
Miss Nitocris' eyes alternately rested on the page for a few moments and then lifted and looked over the lawn towards the open French windows.
The verses ran thus: _"But there comes an idealless lad, With a strut, and a stare, and a smirk; And I watch, scientific though sad, The Law of Selection at work._ _"Of Science he hasn't a trace, He seeks not the How and the Why, But he sings with an amateur's grace And he dances much better than I._ _"And we know the more dandified males By dance and by song win their wives-- 'Tis a law that with_ Aves _prevails, And even in_ Homo _survives."_ "Just my precious papa's ideas!" she murmured, with a toss of her head, and something like a little sniff.

"What a nuisance it all is! Aristocracy of intellect, indeed! Just as if any of us, even my dear Dad, if he _is_ considered one of the cleverest and most learned men in Europe, were anything more than what Newton called himself--a little child picking up pebbles and grains of sand on the shore of a boundless and fathomless ocean, and calling them knowledge.

I'm not quite sure that that's correct, but it's something like it.

Still, that's not the question.