million sestertia stated in cowries? How much in
currency, gold being at 1.37 1/4/? Right; go up. Stop,
I forget myself!

So, to resume, the project of the Brick Moon hung in
the ideal, an airy vision, a vision as lovely and as
distant as the Brick Moon itself, at this calm moment of
midnight when I write, as it poises itself over the
shoulder of Orion, in my southern horizon. Stop! I
anticipate. Let me keep--as we say in Beadle's Dime
Series--to the even current of my story.

Seventeen years passed by, we were no longer boys,
though we felt so. For myself, to this hour, I never
enter board meeting, committee meeting, or synod, without
the queer question, what would happen should any one
discover that this bearded man was only a big boy
disguised? that the frockcoat and the round hat are none
of mine, and that, if I should be spurned from the
assembly, as an interloper, a judicious public, learning
all the facts, would give a verdict, "Served him right."
This consideration helps me through many bored meetings
which would be else so dismal. What did my old copy
say?--

"Boards are made of wood, they are long and narrow."

But we do not get on!

Seventeen years after, I say, or should have said,