s, if any should happen to flow from it.

"Flow from it" is just the phrase; for it has to do with a blot of ink.

My blot of ink is hardly dry. It is a large one, too; of abnormal shape,
and altogether monstrous, whether one considers it from the physical
side or studies it in its moral bearings. It is very much more than an
accident; it has something of the nature of an outrage. It was at
the National Library that I perpetrated it, and upon--But I must not
anticipate.

I often work in the National Library; not in the main hall, but in that
reserved for literary men who have a claim, and are provided with a
ticket, to use it. I never enter it without a gentle thrill, in which
respect is mingled with satisfied vanity. For not every one who chooses
may walk in. I must pass before the office of the porter, who retains my
umbrella, before I make my way to the solemn beadle who sits just inside
the doorway--a double precaution, attesting to the majesty of the place.
The beadle knows me. He no longer demands my ticket. To be sure, I am
not yet one of those old acquaintances on whom he smiles; but I am
no longer reckoned among those novices whose passport he exacts. An
inclination of his head makes me free of the temple, and says, as
plainly as words, "You are one of us, albeit a trifle young. Walk in,
sir."

And in I walk, and admire on each occasion the vast proportions of the
interior, the severe decoration of the walls, traced with broad foliated
pattern and wainscoted with books of reference as high as hand can
reach; the dread tribunal of librarians and keepers in session down
yonder, on a kind of judgment-seat, at the end of the avenue whose
carpet deadens all footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies
where work the doubly privileged--the men, I imagine, who are members
of two or three academies. To right and left of this avenue are rows of
tables and armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit
consecrated, the learned population of the library. Men form the large
majority. Viewed from the rear, as they bend over their work, they
suggest reflections on the ravages wrought by study upon hair-clad
cuticles. For every hirsute Southerner whose locks turn gray without
dropping off, heavens, what a regiment of bald heads! Visitors who look
in through the glass doors see only this aspect of devastation. It gives
a wrong impression. Here and there, at haphazard, you may find a few
women among these me