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now the Inns as Dickens knew them, let us accompany Mr. Pickwick to the Magpie and Stump in search of Mr. Lowten, Mr. Perker's clerk."Is Mr. Lowten here, ma'am?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. "Yes, he is, sir," replied the landlady. "Here, Charley, show the gentleman in to Mr. Lowten." "The gen'lm'n can't go in just now," said a shambling pot-boy, with a red head, "'cos Mr. Lowten's singin' a comic song, and he'll put him out. He'll be done d'rectly,

rs to do the work cheaper, I do not know, but shesuddenly withdrew her custom, and I have never heard from her since.My next venture was tale writing. Who has not tried this mostunsatisfactory method? It is a tremendously anxious time when yourfirst effort is sent out. What a lot of money you expect to obtain forit! You do not intend to be unprepared, so you spend every penny inyour mind beforehand. Then there is the honor and glory of it! Youwill hear everyone talking of the cleverly written

m nothingbut horrors, he may well ask--"Where's the entertainment for the manwho wants an evening's amusement?" The humor of a farce may not seemover-refined to a particular class of intelligence; but there arethousands of people who take an honest pleasure in it. And who, afterseeing my old friend J.L. Toole in some of his famous parts, andhaving laughed till their sides ached, have not left the theatre morebuoyant and light-hearted than they came? Well, if the stage hasbeen thus

hunt for them, that the following pages are totreat. It is a subject more closely connected with the taste forcuriosities than with art, strictly so called. We are to beoccupied, not so much with literature as with books, not so muchwith criticism as with bibliography, the quaint duenna ofliterature, a study apparently dry, but not without its humours.And here an apology must be made for the frequent allusions andanecdotes derived from French writers. These are as unavoidable,almost, as the use

re crossing the way of each other.The gentleman's name that met him was Mr. Worldly-wiseman; hedwelt in the town of Carnal Policy, a very great town, and alsohard by from whence Christian came. This man, then, meeting withChristian, and having some inkling[19] of him, for Christian'ssetting forth from the City of Destruction was much noised abroad,not only in the town where he dwelt, but, also, it began to be thetown-talk in some other places. Master Worldly-wiseman, therefore,having some guess

To understand allmysteries, to have all knowledge, to be able to comprehend with allsaints, is a great work; enough to crush the spirit, and to stretch thestrings of the most capacious, widened soul that breatheth on this sideglory, be they notwithstanding exceedingly enlarged by revelation.Paul, when he was caught up to heaven, saw that which was unlawful,because impossible, for man to utter. And saith Christ to thereasoning Pharisee, "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believenot,

nclusions beforehand into the acceptable and the inacceptable, the edifying and the shocking, the noble and the base. Wonder has no longer been the root of philosophy, but sometimes impatience at having been cheated and sometimes fear of being undeceived. The marvel of existence, in which the luminous and the opaque are so romantically mingled, no longer lay like a sea open to intellectual adventure, tempting the mind to conceive some bold and curious system of the universe on the analogy of

o which many of my critics have fallen.Whenever my view strikes them as being at all outside the rangeof, say, an ordinary suburban churchwarden, they conclude that Iam echoing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy,or some other heresiarch in northern or eastern Europe.I confess there is something flattering in this simple faith inmy accomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as aphilosopher. But I cannot tolerate the assumption that life andliterature is so poor in these

nationwide portrayal of "the important" as composed primarily of the doings and undoings of entertainers, athletes, politicians, and criminals.He would not, I think, have been unduly dismayed by all that. Of course, he would have been dismayed but not unduly. Such things are implicit in the freedom of the press, and if enough people want them, they'll have them. (Jefferson would surely have wondered why so many people wanted such things, but that's not to the point just now.)

one about some very frightening and mysterious happenings in a modest suburban house on Long Island, and the other about excellence. I now have reason to hope that she has been reading Emerson, and she probably has. She is not a shirker, but, at least usually, as much a person of serious intent as one should be at her age and in her condition. Her understanding of Emerson is not perfect, but neither is mine. The essay she has been reading, I have read many times, and every time with the