all folios are pretty sure to be), and you serve
as ballast to the lower shelves of a library, about as like to be
disturbed as the kentledge in the hold of a ship. Write a story, or a
dozen stories, and your book will be in demand like an oyster while it is
freshly opened, and after tha--. The highways of literature are spread
over with the shells of dead novels, each of which has been swallowed at
a mouthful by the public, and is done with. But write a volume of poems.
No matter if they are all bad but one, if that one is very good. It will
carry your name down to posterity like the ring of Thothmes, like the
coin of Alexander. I don't suppose one would care a great deal about it
a hundred or a thousand years after he is dead, but I don't feel quite
sure. It seems as if, even in heaven, King David might remember "The
Lord is my Shepherd" with a certain twinge of earthly pleasure. But we
don't know, we don't know.

--What in the world can have become of That Boy and his popgun while all
this somewhat extended sermonizing was going on? I don't wonder you ask,
beloved Reader, and I suppose I must tell you how we got on so long
without interruption. Well, the plain truth is, the youngster was
contemplating his gastric centre, like the monks of Mount Athos, but in a
less happy state of mind than those tranquil recluses, in consequence of
indulgence in the heterogeneous assortment of luxuries procured with the
five-cent piece given him by the kind-hearted old Master. But you need
not think I am going to tell you every time his popgun goes off, making a
Selah of him whenever I want to change the subject. Occasionally he was
ill-timed in his artillery practice and ignominiously rebuked, sometimes
he was harmlessly playful and nobody minded him, but every now and then
he came in so apropos that I am morally certain he gets a hint from
somebody who watches the course of the conversation, and means through
him to have a hand in it and stop any of us when we are getting prosy.
But in consequence of That Boy's indiscretion, we were without a check
upon our expansiveness, and ran on in the way you have observed and may
be disposed to find fault with.

One other thing the Master said before we left the table, after our long
talk of that day.

--I have been tempted sometimes,--said he, to envy the immediate triumphs
of the singer. He enjoys all that praise can do for him and at the very
moment of exerting his talent. A