and constantly wearying people with what they know already so well?
The gentle reader, familiar with Parini's immortal poem----

_The Gentle Reader._--His immortal poem? What _is_ his immortal poem?
I never heard even the name of it!

Is it possible? But you, fair reader, who have its finest scenes by
heart----

_The Fair Reader._--Yes, certainly; of course. But one reads so many
things. I don't believe I half remember those striking passages
of----what is the poem? And who did you say the author was?

Oh, madam! And is this undying fame? Is this the immortality for which
we waste our time? Is this the remembrance for which the essayist
sicklies his visage over with the pale cast of thought? Why, at this
rate, even those whose books are favorably noticed by the newspapers
will be forgotten in a thousand years. But it is at least consoling
to know that you have merely forgotten Parini's poems, the subject of
which you will at once recollect when I remind you that it is called
The Day, and celebrates The Morning, The Noon, The Evening, and The
Night of a gentleman of fashion as Milan knew him for fifty years in
the last century.

This gentleman, whatever his nominal business in the world might
be, was first and above all a cavaliere servente, and the cavaliere
servente was the invention, it is said, of Genoese husbands who had
not the leisure to attend their wives to the theater, the promenade,
the card-table, the _conversazione_, and so installed their nearest
idle friends permanently in the office. The arrangement was found so