, as all a man knows about a woman whom he looks at is just what a
picture as big as a copper, or a "nickel," rather, at the bottom of his
eye can teach him, I think I am right in saying we are talking about the
pictures of women.--Well, now, the reason why a man is not desperately in
love with ten thousand women at once is just that which prevents all our
portraits being distinctly seen upon that wall. They all _are_ painted
there by reflection from our faces, but because _all_ of them are painted
on each spot, and each on the same surface, and many other objects at the
same time, no one is seen as a picture. But darken a chamber and let a
single pencil of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture on
the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in distinction from women,
until we can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and then we can see
nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in our mental
camera-obscura.

----My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave town whenever the
anniversaries come round.

What's the difficulty?--Why, they all want him to get up and make
speeches, or songs, or toasts; which is just the very thing he doesn't
want to do. He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on these
occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and can't do without him, and
feel all over his poor weak head until they get their fingers on the
_fontanelle_, (the Professor will tell you what this means,--he says the
one at the top of the head always remains open in poets,) until, by gentle
pressure on that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the point of
acquiescence.

There are times, though, he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to
some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a
handful of what grows there,--weeds and violets together,--not cutting
them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow
in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look
here, now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, were pulled
up by the roots just in that way, the other day.--Beautiful entertainment,
--names there on the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues as
familiarly as _and_ or _the_; entertainers known wherever good poetry and
fair title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind-hearted, modest, genial,
hopeful poet, who sings to the hearts of his countrymen, the British
people, the songs of good