The fault with existence, dear reader, is that we are too busy living to live. We page 15 are bored, bilious and blase. We are mere “tempus fugitives,” tied to time yet pursued by it. We suffer from palpitation of the pandemonium. We are “smug-ologists”; nothing surprises us, we wonder at nothing. The days of Wonder went with whiskers and whatnots. But when Wonder is paid off he takes with him his natural partners, Joie de Vivre and Happy Jack, the paying teller of the Bank of Serenity. We accept Life at his face value, and he's got the face to pull any bluff. But in life, as in everything, there is a story behind the story; this is the one worth digging out, and in the excavation lies the secret of Wonder. There is a kick in Old Man Wonder. The highbrow who knows everything is a deep-sea fish who sees nothing but water; he is a water-logged water log. But the fish who refuses to agree that the whole world is aquatinted, either grows legs or bursts his airtight compartment; whichever way it goes he has a lot of fun. There are more fish out of the sea than ever lived in it, which accounts for the fact that life is a somewhat fishy business.