jousting list, the audience halls and the petits cabinets of kings of
France, sound over the trackless and storm-beaten ocean--will echo, in
short, wherever warm blood has jumped in the veins of honest men and
wherever vice has sooner or later been stretched groveling in the dust
at the feet of triumphant virtue.

And so, sighing to the uttermost ends of the earth, the old novel-reader
will confess that he wishes he hadn't. Had not read all those novels
that troop through his memory. Because, if he hadn't--and it is the
impossibility of the alternative that chills his soul with the despair
of cruel realization--if he hadn't, you see, he could begin at the very
first, right then and there, and read the whole blessed business through
for the first time. For the FIRST TIME, mark you! Is there anywhere in
this great round world a novel reader of true genius who would not do
that with the joy of a child and the thankfulness of a sage?

Such a dream would be the foundation of the story of a really noble Dr.
Faustus. How contemptible is the man who, having staked his life freely
upon a career, whines at the close and begs for another chance; just
one more--and a different career! It is no more than Mr. Jack Hamlin, a
friend from Calaveras County, California, would call "the baby act,"
or his compeer, Mr. John Oakhurst, would denominate "a squeal." How
glorious, on the other hand, is the man who has spent his life in his
own way, and, at its eventide, waves his hand to the sinking sun and
cries out: "Goodbye; but if I could do so, I should be glad to go over
it all again with you--just as it was!" If honesty is rated in heaven
as we have been taught to believe, depend upon it the novel-reader
who sighs to eat the apple he has just devoured, will have no trouble
hereafter.