unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling
hands; but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself
into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Rupert's-
drops of the learned and polite world. See how the papers treat
them! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, which can
be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their service!
How kind the "Critical Notices"--where small authorship comes to
pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy--always are to
them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other
fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips; don't
puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their
pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and
unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names
will be household words a thousand years from now.

"A thousand years is a good while," said the old gentleman who sits
opposite, thoughtfully.

- Where have I been for the last three or four days? Down at the
Island, deer-shooting.--How many did I bag? I brought home one
buck shot.--The Island is where? No matter. It is the most
splendid domain that any man looks upon in these latitudes. Blue
sea around it, and running up into its heart, so that the little
boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are
stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-
sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles;
beeches, oaks, most numerous;--many of them hung with moss, looking
like bearded Druids; some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed
grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep,
and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as swan's