left off that Roundabout business, I see; very glad you have," I joined
in the general roar of laughter at the table. I don't care a fig
whether Archilochus likes the papers or no. You don't like partridge,
Archilochus, or porridge, or what not? Try some other dish. I am not
going to force mine down your throat, or quarrel with you if you refuse
it. Once in America a clever and candid woman said to me, at the
close of a dinner, during which I had been sitting beside her, "Mr.
Roundabout, I was told I should not like you; and I don't." "Well,
ma'am," says I, in a tone of the most unfeigned simplicity, "I don't
care." And we became good friends immediately, and esteemed each other
ever after.

So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and say, "Fudge!"
and pass on to another, I for one shall not be in the least mortified.
If you say, "What does he mean by calling this paper On Two Children
in Black, when there's nothing about people in black at all, unless the
ladies he met (and evidently bored) at dinner, were black women? What
is all this egotistical pother? A plague on his I's!" My dear fellow,
if you read "Montaigne's Essays," you must own that he might call almost
any one by the name of any other, and that an essay on the Moon or an
essay on Green Cheese would be as appropriate a title as one of his on
Coaches, on the Art of Discoursing, or Experience, or what you will.
Besides, if I HAVE a subject (and I have) I claim to approach it in a
roundabout manner.

You remember Balzac's tale of the Peau de Chagrin, and how every time
the possessor used it for the accomplishment of some wish the fairy Peau
shrank a little and the owner's life correspondingly shortened? I have
such a desire to be well with my public that I am actually giving up
my favorite story. I am killing my goose, I know I am. I can't tell