Although at present neither celebrated nor notorious, I have a presentiment that I am speedily about to become one or the other. Through an accidental rip in the curtain of futurity, I have caught a glimpse of the Goddess of Fame. I have heard her sing out from her rather elevated position for me to come up and take a "hasty plate" of glory; and I have not the heart to refuse the request of such a good-looking female, preferred in such elegant language. I am going to shin up the slippery rope leading to her aerial temple (for accurate dimensions and appearance, see engraving in the old Elementary Spelling Book), for the purpose of taking a hand in the game of literary renown, trusting that Nature has given me trumps enough to make the "game," and that Fortune will deal me all "the honors." For weeks I have been haunted perpetually by a voice--not a "still, small voice"--but a large voice, a considerable voice; a voice vociferous, unctuous, and ever-present, and withal insinuating, and not wholly distasteful. It has been constant in my ear, suggesting pleasing hopes and fanciful desires; and though its _notes_ were often varied, yet ever was the _theme_ the same; and the constant burden of that ceaseless song was, "Write a book! write a book!" And in dreams, too, visions of good-looking ladies with wings, came into my 7x9 chamber, and whispered in my ear, and they too said, "Write a book! write a book!"--and one I thought, with versi-colored plumage, with her finger on her lip, quoted the perpetually murdered Shakspeare prophetically, and, no doubt, with an eye to the success of the volume aforesaid, and said, suiting with a fairy-like gesture the action to the word, "I could a tale unfold." And plucking a snowy quill, she gave it to me, murmuring, as did all the rest, "Write a book! write a book!" Awoke--put on my pantaloons and boots, and in my shirt sleeves sat down to cogitate. Result is, that I shall use the lengthy quill--I shall accept the pressing invitation of the Goddess of Fame; and in order most effectually to _dis_-tinguish or _ex_-tinguish myself, hereby with malice aforethought, and the penalty of a failure before my eyes, I sit down to write a book. But my physician informs me that I have got the "cacoethes scribendi," which he says is as bad as the small-pox, toothache, and yellow fever. The disease, he says, must have its course--it may end in a malignant biography--result in an infectious broadsword and blunderbuss, yellow covered novel, or degenerate into a weak form of pseudo-sentimental verse writing, in which latter case, on the appearance of the first symptom he intends to order me a literary tombstone.