esent age should lend
no countenance?

And what can be the worth of that solicitude which a peep into the
third volume can utterly dissipate? What the value of those literary
charms which are absolutely destroyed by their enjoyment? When we
have once learnt what was that picture before which was hung Mrs.
Ratcliffe's solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either
the frame or the veil. They are to us merely a receptacle for old
bones, an inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently
buried out of our sight.

And then how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your
novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader.
"Oh, you needn't be alarmed for Augusta; of course she accepts
Gustavus in the end." "How very ill-natured you are, Susan," says
Kitty with tears in her eyes: "I don't care a bit about it now."
Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the ill-nature of
your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay,
take the third volume if you please--learn from the last pages all
the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none
of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose.

Our doctrine is that the author and the reader should move along
together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages
of the drama undergo ever so complete a comedy of errors among
themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for
the Ephesian; otherwise he is one of the dupes, and the part of a
dupe is never dignified.

I would not for the value of this chapter have it believed by a
single reader that my Eleanor could bring herself to marry Mr. Slope,
or that she should be sacrificed to a Bertie Stanhope. But among the
good folk of Barchester many believed both the one and the other.

CHAPTER XVI

Baby Worship

"Diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, dum, dum, dum," said or sung Eleanor
Bold.

"Diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, dum, dum, dum," continued Mary Bold,
taking up the second part in this concerted piece.

The only audience at the concert was the baby, who however gave such
vociferous applause that the performers, presuming it to amount to an
encore, commenced again.

"Diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, dum, dum, dum: hasn't he got lovely
legs?" said the rapturous mother.

"H'm 'm 'm 'm 'm," simmered Mary, burying her lips in the little
fellow's fat neck, by way of kissing him.

"H'm 'm 'm 'm