butterfly--no, nor an angel in heaven--could never begin excusing the
law of its existence. Butterfly-brother, the hail will be upon you."

I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels taken
alone serve one much as sweetmeats _ad libitum_ do children, nor that
she had to prove that life has in it that spiritual quinine, precious
because bitter, whose part it is to wake the higher hunger.

Tom talked of himself as on the staff of "The Firefly"--such was the
name of the newspaper whose editor sometimes paid him--a weekly of
great pretense, which took upon itself the mystery of things, as if it
were God's spy. It was popular in a way, chiefly in fashionable
circles. As regarded the opinions it promulgated, I never heard one,
who understood the particular question at any time handled, say it was
correct. Its writers were mostly young men, and their passion was to
say clever things. If a friend's book came in their way, it was treated
worse or better than that of a stranger, but with impartial disregard
for truth in either case; yet many were the authors who would go up
endless back stairs to secure from that paper a flattering criticism,
and then be as proud of it as if it had been the genuine and unsought
utterance of a true man's conviction; and many were the men,
immeasurably the superiors of the reviewers, and in a general way
acquainted with their character, who would accept as conclusive upon
the merits of a book the opinions they gave, nor ever question a mode
of quotation by which a book was made to show itself whatever the
reviewer chose to call it. A scandalous rumor of any kind, especially
from the region styled "high life," often false, and always incorrect,
was the delight both of the paper and of its readers; and the interest
it thus awoke, united to the fear it thus caused, was mainly what
procured for such as were known to be employed upon it the _entree_ of
houses where, if they had had a private existence only, their faces
would never have been seen. But, to do Tom justice, he wrote nothing of
this sort: he was neither ill-natured nor experienced enough for that
department; what he did write was clever, shallow sketches of that same
society into whose charmed precincts he was but so lately a comer that
much was to him interesting which had long ceased to be observed by
eyes turned horny with the glare of the world's footlights; and, while
these sketches pleased the young people especially