or not, when everybody can look in at his windows, and all his entrances
are at the mercy of the critic's skeleton key and the jimmy of any
ill-disposed assailant!

The company have been silent listeners for the most part; but the reader
will have a chance to become better acquainted with some cf them by and
by.




II

TO THE READER.

I know that it is a hazardous experiment to address myself again to a
public which in days long past has given me a generous welcome. But my
readers have been, and are, a very faithful constituency. I think there
are many among them who would rather listen to an old voice they are used
to than to a new one of better quality, even if the "childish treble"
should betray itself now and then in the tones of the overtired organ.
But there must be others,--I am afraid many others,--who will exclaim:
"He has had his day, and why can't he be content? We don't want literary
revenants, superfluous veterans, writers who have worn out their welcome
and still insist on being attended to. Give us something fresh,
something that belongs to our day and generation. Your morning draught
was well enough, but we don't care for your evening slip-slop. You are
not in relation with us, with our time, our ideas, our aims, our
aspirations."