the worlds.

She is uninventive, if you will, this Nature, but she is tireless.
Generation by generation she brings it about that for a period weak men
may stalk as demigods, while to every woman is granted at least one hour
wherein to spurn the earth, a warm, breathing angel. Generation by
generation does Nature thus betrick humanity, that humanity may endure.

Here for a little--with the gracious connivance of Mr. R. E. Townsend,
to whom all lyrics hereinafter should be accredited--I have followed
Nature, the arch-trickster. Through her monstrous tapestry I have traced
out for you the windings of a single thread. It is parti-colored, this
thread--now black for a mourning sign, and now scarlet where blood has
stained it, and now brilliancy itself--for the tinsel of young love
(if, as wise men tell us, it be but tinsel), at least makes a
prodigiously fine appearance until time tarnish it. I entreat you, dear
lady, to accept this traced-out thread with assurances of my most
distinguished regard.

The gift is not great. Hereinafter is recorded nothing more weighty than
the follies of young persons, perpetrated in a lost world which when
compared with your ladyship's present planet seems rather callow.
Hereinafter are only love-stories, and nowadays nobody takes love-making
very seriously....

And truly, my dear madam, I dare say the Pompeiians did not take Vesuvius
very seriously; it was merely an eligible spot for a _fete champetre_.
And when gaunt fishermen first preached Christ about the highways, depend
upon it, that was not taken very seriously, either. _Credat Judaeus_; but
all sensible folk--such as you and I, my dear madam--passed on with a