ve. Yet all this may be pleasant reading to relatives and
friends.

But I must not forget that a new generation of readers has come into
being since I have been writing for the public, and that a new
generation of aspiring and brilliant authors has grown into general
recognition. The dome of Boston State House, which is the centre of my
little universe, was glittering in its fresh golden pellicle before I
had reached the scriptural boundary of life. It has lost its lustre now,
and the years which have dulled its surface have whitened the dome of
that fragile structure in which my consciousness holds the session of
its faculties. Time is not to be cheated. It is easy to talk of
perennial youth, and to toy with the flattering fictions which every
ancient personage accepts as true so far as he himself is concerned, and
laughs at as foolish talk when he hears them applied to others. When, in
my exulting immaturity, I wrote the lines not unknown to the reading
public under the name of "The Last Leaf", I spoke of the possibility
that I myself might linger on the old bough until the buds and blossoms
of a new spring were opening and spreading all around me. I am not as
yet the solitary survivor of my literary contemporaries, and,
remembering who my few coevals are, it may well be hoped that I shall
not be. But I feel lonely, very lonely, in the pages through which I
wander. These are new names in the midst of which I find my own. In
another sense I am very far from alone. I have daily assurances that I
have a constituency of known and unknown personal friends, whose
indulgence I have no need of asking. I know there are readers enough who
will be pleased to follow me in my brief excursion, _because I am
myself_, and will demand no better reason. If I choose to write for
them, I do no injury to those for whom my personality is an object of
indifference. They will find on every shelf some publications which are
not intended for them, and which they prefer to let alone. No person is
expected to help himself to everything set before him at a public table.
I will not, therefore, hesitate to go on with the simple story of our
Old World experiences.

Thanks to my Indian blanket,--my shawl, I mean,--I found myself nothing
the worse for my manifold adventures of the 27th of May. The cold wind
sweeping over Epsom downs reminded me of our own chilling easterly
breezes; especially the northeasterly ones, which are to me less
disagreeable