Alas! there were some excellent reasons against such a consummation. So, respected reader, whatever liberties we might take with you, we had to look nearer home, and bethink us of ourselves. _After all_--and what a glorious charge to the jury of one’s conscience is your after all!--- what a plenary indulgence against all your sins of commission and omission!--what a makepeace to self-accusation, and what a salve to heartfelt repinings!--after all, we did know a great deal about O’Leary: his life and opinions, his habits and haunts, his prejudices, pleasures, and predilections: and although we never performed Boz to his Johnson, still had we ample knowledge of him for all purposes of book-writing; and there was no reason why we should not assume his mantle, or rather his Macintosh, if the weather required it. Having in some sort allayed our scruples in this fashion, and having satisfied our conscience by the resolve, that if we were not about to record the actual _res gesto_ of Mr. O’Leary, neither would we set down anything which _might not_ have been one of his adventures, nor put into his mouth any imaginary conversations which _he might not_ have sustained; so that, in short, should the volume ever come under the eyes of the respected gentleman himself, considerable mystification would exist, as to whether he did not say, do, and think, exactly as we made him, and much doubt lie on his mind that he was not the author himself. We wish particularly to lay stress on the honesty of these our intentions--the more, as subsequent events have interfered with their accomplishment; and we can only assure the world of what we would have done, had we been permitted. And here let us observe, _en passant_, that if other literary characters had been actuated by similarly honourable views, we should have been spared those very absurd speeches which Sallust attributes to his characters in the Catiline conspiracy; and another historian, with still greater daring, assumes the Prince of Orange _ought_ to have spoken, at various epochs in the late Belgian revolution. With such prospective hopes, then, did we engage in the mystery of these same “Loiterings,” and with a pleasure such as only men of the pen can appreciate, did we watch the bulky pile of MS. that was growing up before us, while the interest of the work had already taken hold of us; and whether we moved our puppets to the slow figure of a minuet, or rattled them along at the slap-dash, hurry-scurry, devil-may-care pace, for which our critics habitually give us credit, we felt that our foot beat time responsively to the measure, and that we actually began to enjoy the performance.