to nick it better to-morrow. The soul withdraws into its depths. The
stars arise (offering two or three thousand more impracticable suns),
and the night is ironical.

[Illustration]

Having already conquered, without boasting, a certain success before
the reading public, and having persuaded an author of renown to sign
his name to my bantling, my Expectation and Hope have long been to
surpass that trifling production. You may think it a slight thing to
prepare a lucky volume, and, tapping Fame familiarly on the shoulder,
engage her to undertake its colportage throughout the different
countries of the globe. My first little work of travel and geography
had exceeded my dreams of a good reception. It had earned me several
proposals from publishers; it had been annotated with "How true!" and
"Most profound!" by the readers in public libraries; its title had
given an imaginative air to the ledgers of book-sellers; and it had
added a new shade of moodiness to the collection of Mudie. The man
who hits one success by accident is always trying to hit another by
preparation. Since that achievement I have thought of nothing but the
creation of another impromptu, and I have really prepared a quantity
of increments toward it in the various places to which my traveling
existence has led me. That I have settled down, since these many years
past, at the centre and capital of ideas would prove me, even without
the indiscretions of that first little book, an American by birth. I
need not add that my card is printed in German text, Paul Fleming,
and that time has brought to me a not ungraceful, though a
sometimes practically retardating, circumference. Beneath a mask of
cheerfulness, and even of obesity, however, I continue to guard
the sensitive feelings of my earlier days. Yes: under this abnormal