A Presentation Copy, Reader,-if Haply You Are

When I Consider How Little Of A Rarity Children Are -- That Every Street And Blind Alley Swarms With Them -- That The Poorest People Commonly Have Them In Most Abundance -- That There Are Few Marriages That Are Not Blest With At Least One Of These Bargains -- How Often They Turn Out Ill, And Defeat The Fond Hopes Of Their Parents, Taking To Vicious Courses, Which End In Poverty, Disgrace, The Gallows, Etc. -- I Cannot For My Life Tell What Cause For Pride There Can Possibly Be In Having Them.

I Have Something More To Do Than To Feel.

Summer, As My Friend Coleridge Waggishly Writes, Has Set In With Its Usual Severity.

I Grow Ominously Tired Of Official Confinement. Thirty Years Have I Served The Philistines, And My Neck Is Not Subdued To The Yoke. You Don't Know How Wearisome It Is To Breathe The Air Of Four Pent Walls Without Relief Day After Day, All The Golden Hours Of The Day Between Ten And Four Without Ease Or Interposition ... These Pestilential Clerk-faces Always In One's Dish. O For A Few Years Between The Grave And The Desk!

Were I Diogenes, I Would Not Move Out Of A Kilderkin Into A Hogshead, Though The First Had Had Nothing But Small Beer In It, And The Second Reeked Claret.