s way,
as it best may, to whatever it can wind around. The thought of finding
here and there an old friend, and making, it may be, once in a while a
new one, is very grateful to me. The chief drawback to the pleasure is
the feeling that I am submitting to that inevitable exposure which is
the penalty of authorship in every form. A writer must make up his mind
to the possible rough treatment of the critics, who swarm like bacteria
whenever there is any literary material on which they can feed. I have
had as little to complain of as most writers, yet I think it is always
with reluctance that one encounters the promiscuous handling which
the products of the mind have to put up with, as much as the fruit and
provisions in the market-stalls. I had rather be criticised, however,
than criticise; that is, express my opinions in the public prints of
other writers' work, if they are living, and can suffer, as I should
often have to make them. There are enough, thank Heaven, without me.
We are literary cannibals, and our writers live on each other and each
other's productions to a fearful extent. What the mulberry leaf is
to the silk-worm, the author's book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the
critical larva; that feed upon it. It furnishes them with food and
clothing. The process may not be agreeable to the mulberry leaf or to
the printed page; but without it the leaf would not have become the silk
that covers the empress's shoulders, and but for the critic the author's
book might never have reached the scholar's table. Scribblers will feed
on each other, and if we insist on being scribblers we must consent to
be fed on. We must try to endure philosophically what we cannot help,
and ought not, I suppose, to wish to help.

It is the custom at our table to vary the usual talk, by the reading of
short papers, in prose or verse, by one or more of The Teacups, as we
are in the habit of calling those who make up our company. Thirty
years ago, one of our present circle--"Teacup Number Two," The
Professor,--read a paper on Old Age, at a certain Breakfast-table, where
he was in the habit of appearing. That paper was published at the time,
and has since seen the light in other forms. He did not know so much
about old age then as he does now, and would doubtless write somewhat
differently if he took the subject up again. But I found that it was the
general wish that another of our company should let us hear what he had
to say about it. I recei