and feeling as if I were looking down a vista of twenty or thirty
centuries.

The "Man of Letters," so called, said, in a rather contemptuous way, I
thought, that he had n't got so far as that. He was n't quite up to
moral reflections on toll-men and ticket-takers. Sentiment was n't his
tap.

He looked round triumphantly for a response: but the Capitalist was a
little hard of hearing just then; the Register of Deeds was browsing on
his food in the calm bovine abstraction of a quadruped, and paid no
attention; the Salesman had bolted his breakfast, and whisked himself
away with that peculiar alacrity which belongs to the retail dealer's
assistant; and the Member of the Haouse, who had sometimes seemed to be
impressed with his "tahlented mahn's" air of superiority to the rest of
us, looked as if he thought the speaker was not exactly parliamentary.
So he failed to make his point, and reddened a little, and was not in the
best humor, I thought, when he left the table. I hope he will not let
off any of his irritation on our poor little Scheherezade; but the truth
is, the first person a man of this sort (if he is what I think him)
meets, when he is out of humor, has to be made a victim of, and I only
hope our Young Girl will not have to play Jephthah's daughter.

And that leads me to say, I cannot help thinking that the kind of
criticism to which this Young Girl has been subjected from some person or
other, who is willing to be smart at her expense, is hurtful and not
wholesome. The question is a delicate one. So many foolish persons are
rushing into print, that it requires a kind of literary police to hold
them back and keep them in order. Where there are mice there must be
cats, and where there are rats we may think it worth our while to keep a
terrier, who will give them a shake and let them drop, with all the
mischief taken out of them. But the process is a rude and cruel one at
best, and it too often breeds a love of destructiveness for its own sake
in those who get their living by it. A poor poem or essay does not do
much harm after all; nobody reads it who is like to be seriously hurt by
it. But a sharp criticism with a drop of witty venom in it stings a
young author almost to death, and makes an old one uncomfortable to no
purpose. If it were my business to sit in judgment on my neighbors, I
would try to be courteous, at least, to those who had done any good
service, but, above all, I would handle tenderl