last two centuries tell, the tale that the milkmen tell ripples wisely
on, so full of quotation from the profoundest writers, so full of
recondite allusion, so deeply tinged with all the wisdom of man and
instructive with the experience of all times that they that hear it in
the Milkmen's Hall as they interpret allusion after allusion and trace
obscure quotation lose idle curiosity and forget to question why the
milkman shudders when he perceives the dawn.

You also, O my reader, give not yourself up to curiosity. Consider of
how many it is the bane. Would you to gratify this tear away the
mystery from the Milkmen's Hall and wrong the Ancient Company of
Milkmen? Would they if all the world knew it and it became a common
thing to tell that tale any more that they have told for the last four
hundred years? Rather a silence would settle upon their hall and a
universal regret for the ancient tale and the ancient winter evenings.
And though curiosity were a proper consideration yet even then this is
not the proper place nor this the proper occasion for the Tale. For
the proper place is only the Milkmen's Hall and the proper occasion
only when logs burn well and when wine has been deeply drunken, then
when the candles were burning well in long rows down to the dimness,
down to the darkness and mystery that lie at the end of the hall, then
were you one of the Company, and were I one of the five, would I rise
from my seat by the fireside and tell you with all the embellishments
that it has gleaned from the ages that story that is the heirloom of
the milkmen. And the long candles would burn lower and lower and
gutter and gutter away till they liquefied in their sockets, and
draughts would blow from the shadowy end of the hall stronger and
stronger till the shadows came after them, and still I would hold you
with that treasured story, not by any wit of mine but all for the sake
of its glamour and the times out of which it came; one by one the