himself, except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. One in the
clothing-business, who, there is reason to suspect, may have inherited,
by descent, the great poet's impressible temperament, let a customer
slip through his fingers one day without fitting him with a new garment.
"Ah!" said he to a friend of mine, who was standing by, "if it hadn't
been for that confounded headache of mine this morning, I'd have had
a coat on that man, in spite of himself, before he left-the store." A
passing throb, only,--but it deranged the nice mechanism required
to persuade the accidental human being, X, into a given piece of
broadcloth, A.

We must take care not to confound this frequent difficulty of
transmission of our ideas with want of ideas. I suppose that a man's
mind does in time form a neutral salt with the elements in the universe
for which it has special elective affinities. In fact, I look upon a
library as a kind of mental chemist's shop filled with the crystals of
all forms and hues which have come from the union of individual thought
with local circumstances or universal principles.

When a man has worked out his special affinities in this way, there
is an end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and
hissing tumult--as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting
alkaline unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets
covered with lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning them,
first into clear solutions, and then into lustrous prisms!

I, the Professor, am very much like other men: I shall not find out when
I have used up my affinities. What a blessed thing it is, that Nature,
when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to
make critics out of the chips that were left! Painful as the task is,
they never fail to warn the author, in the most impressive manner,
of the probabilities of failure in what he has undertaken. Sad as the
necessity is to their delicate sensibilities, they never hesitate to
advertise him of the decline of his powers, and to press upon him the
propriety of retiring before he sinks into imbecility. Trusting to their
kind offices, I shall endeavor to fulfil--

--Bridget enters and begins clearing the table.

--The following poem is my (The Professor's) only contribution to the
great department of Ocean-Cable literature. As all the poets of this
country will be engaged for the next six weeks in writing for the
premium offered