at I shall cease to follow the
love (or the loves; which do you think is the true word, the singular or
the plural?) of Number Five and the young Tutor who is so constantly
found in her company? Do you suppose that I do not continue my relations
with the "Cracked Teacup,"--the poor old fellow with whom I have so much
in common, whose counterpart, perhaps, you may find in your own complex
personality?

I take from the top shelf of the hospital department of my library--the
section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish
rhymesters, and silly eccentrics--one of the least conspicuous and most
hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual
almshouse. I open it and look through its pages. It is a story. I have
looked into it once before,--on its first reception as a gift from the
author. I try to recall some of the names I see there: they mean nothing
to me, but I venture to say the author cherishes them all, and cries over
them as he did when he was writing their history. I put the book back
among its dusty companions, and, sitting down in my reflective
rocking-chair, think how others must forget, and how I shall remember,
the company that gathered about this table.

Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these pages or in any other?
Will the cracked Teacup hold together, or will he go to pieces, and find
himself in that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which drove
him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls? Has the young
Doctor's crown yet received the seal which is Nature's warrant of wisdom
and proof of professional competency? And Number Five and her young
friend the Tutor,--have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy? Did
they get through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the same old
large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the best, and in
reading from which their heads were necessarily brought perilously near
to each other?

It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently with the present state
of affairs, bring these two young people together. I say two young
people, for the one who counts most years seems to me to be really the
younger of the pair. That Number Five foresaw from the first that any
tenderer feeling than that of friendship would intrude itself between
them I do not believe. As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was
drifting. It was his first experience in matters concerning the heart,
and absorbed