The work has many imperfections, as all can see--imperfections which cannot be cured, and hence resemble it so much to human nature that we must be pardoned for alleging that circumstance as the chief of two reasons (both disconnected from those philoprogenitive impulsions that we sometimes hear of from mawkish writers) for holding it in esteem. The sun has spots, and we once knew a critic whose grammar was execrable. Lest, however, some persons should officiously infer that we mean to wrong a very excellent class of people, we will state that the analogy between the last-named objects does not cease here. What we wish to say most in this concluding chapter, is that the work was not written to invite anybody's pique, nor to avoid it, nor to flatter anybody, nor to parody anybody, but to gratify a whim, and as it has been announced that there would be no explanation, and the completion of the task leaves us in a mood for conundrums, we shall not interfere with the reader's prerogative of guessing its import. But it was a mere whim, and now that it has been gratified, we feel better--vastly improved, in fact--so much improved that, in order to reach a superlative that will fit our case precisely, we find it necessary to go beyond the dictionary standard, and adopt the beautiful newsboy euphemism, hunky-dory. And then, too, the author has that self gratulation which could not fail to proceed from the knowledge that, from the beginning, a brave effort was maintained to avoid that notoriety which comes of even remote connection with such labor as he has performed,--and which must have succeeded but for his inadvertence in confiding the secret to one female acquaintance instead of fifty. Now that the mischief has been performed, his partiality for the sex leads him to say that he will be more thoughtful in the future. An old friend, whose sagacity regarding such subjects is approved, has informed us confidentially that the book will sell, and if it sells, can it be anybody's business whether it is read or not? After revolving this query in our mind, and inducing a fair analogy between what would be just to the outside world and profitable to ourselves, we are left _statu quo_ until such time as the neighborhood debating society can be heard from. Can anything be more ridiculous than to suppose that there is a word of fiction connected with the foregoing chapters? A half-wit acquaintance, who plumes himself on the accident which enables him to write M. C. after his name, has obtruded this difficulty upon the author, and been handsomely objurgated for his pains. Did we not do right? and why is it that these men are permitted to lounge away from their places of confinement at the most dangerous season of the year?