my story of the children in black after this; after printing it, and
sending it through the country. When they are gone to the printer's
these little things become public property. I take their hands. I bless
them. I say, "Good-by, my little dears." I am quite sorry to part with
them: but the fact is, I have told all my friends about them already,
and don't dare to take them about with me any more.

Now every word is true of this little anecdote, and I submit that there
lies in it a most curious and exciting little mystery. I am like a man
who gives you the last bottle of his '25 claret. It is the pride of his
cellar; he knows it, and he has a right to praise it. He takes up the
bottle, fashioned so slenderly--takes it up tenderly, cants it with
care, places it before his friends, declares how good it is, with honest
pride, and wishes he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine
in his cellar. Si quid novisti, &c., I shall be very glad to hear from
you. I protest and vow I am giving you the best I have.

Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall never probably know
to my dying day. They were very pretty little men, with pale faces, and
large, melancholy eyes; and they had beautiful little hands, and little
boots, and the finest little shirts, and black paletots lined with the
richest silk; and they had picture-books in several languages, English,
and French, and German, I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking little
men I never set eyes on. They were travelling with a very handsome, pale
lady in mourning, and a maid-servant dressed in black, too; and on the
lady's face there was the deepest grief. The little boys clambered
and played about the carriage, and she sat watching. It was a
railway-carriage from Frankfort to Heidelberg.

I saw at once that she was the mother of those children, and going to