But when twenty or thirty ells of the work have been run off, then can I and my by-sitter expect what I will here portray: the reader will hurry as if the Devil were after him; to get through one Dog-post-day he will let six courses grow cold and the dessert warm. But what am I saying? An incarnate Romish king shall ride through the streets and a cannon-thunder bring up the rear,--he shall not hear it; his better half shall give in his library the best of suppers to a connubial excrescence,--he shall not see it; the excrescence itself shall hold assaf[oe]tida under his nose, shall give him in sport light blows with a woodman's axe,--he shall not feel it, so beside himself shall he be on my account, regularly out of his senses. Now that is a misfortune, the certainty of which I seek vainly to hide from myself. When it once comes on, and I have unhappily brought him into that historical clairvoyance where he no longer hears or sees anything except my characters, which are put in _rapport_ with him,--neither father nor cousin,--then I may be sure that he will hear a mining-superintendent still less,--for story is what he wants, and of _me_ he knows absolutely nothing more,--nay, I will suppose, I should let off the motliest fire-works of wit, yes, that chains of philosophical conclusions should hang down in skeins out of my mouth, like ribbons from a juggler's,--what would it avail me? Nevertheless, ribbons must hang down and fire-works play; but it shall be in this way: As from each year so many hours are left off that the remainder of four years makes out an intercalary day,--and as with me after four Dog-post-days there will always be so many Postscripts, so much wit and acuteness lying quite idle, as so much unsalable stuff,[74] that a regular _intercalary day_ could well be made,--it shall be made as often as four dog-dynasties have gone by; only this is still requisite, that I first conclude and ratify with the reader the following boundary agreement and domestic contract, in form and manner to wit:-- I. On the part of the reader it is allowed and granted to the mining-superintendent on St. John's, him and his heirs and assigns, from this time forward, after every fourth Dog-post-day, to prepare and print a witty and learned intercalary day, in which there is no narrative. II. On the part of the mining-superintendent permission is given the reader to skip over every intercalary day and read only the historical days, in consideration whereof both powers waive all _beneficia juris_--_restitutionem in integrum_--_exceptionem læsionis enormis et enormissimæ_---_dispensationem_--_absolutionem_, _etc_. At the Congress of St. John's, May 4, 1793. Thus reads the genuine instrument of the so-called Dog-contract between the mining-superintendent and the reader, and this Act of Renunciation may and must, in future misunderstandings between the two powers, be laid before an umpire or a confederate court,[75] as the single ground of decision.