“_20th._--I began to pack my books the day before yesterday, and yet I linger. ‘Tell me, my heart, if this be love!’ Not much doubt about it, I fear. But only a day or two more, and then--and then good-bye, pretty puritanical Susan, with your Sunday-school morality, and all that innate obstinacy peculiar to quiet women. I shall have forgotten her in six weeks, I dare say. But then that consolatory idea of the future oblivion won’t lessen the present anguish of parting. We may forget all about a gigantic triple-pronged carious tooth when we turn our back upon the dentist’s torture-chamber, but the pang of extraction is none the less. I shall forget her, and some other eyes will haunt me in my sleep; but there must be a long blank interval of weariness before the Lethean waters can wash away that artless face. I have plumbed her simple mind to its uttermost depths, and have found nothing like deception or pretence. So we must part. I to go forth and do my best at opening the great oyster; she to remain here as my landlady’s drudge and companion. Poor little thing! I hope she’ll miss me when I go. I shouldn’t like to think of her enjoying a flirtation with some new lodger--a city clerk, who would wear ready-made clothes bought somewhere in Shoreditch, and smoke cheap Manillas. No, I shouldn’t like to fancy her happy when I am gone. It wouldn’t have been pleasant to the Corsair to imagine Medora flirting with mercantile mariners in his absence. “_21st._--I have packed all my books, except a few German cribs. Perhaps it was as well, for my studies had grown very desultory. How can a fellow read hard when there is a pretty girl in the case, and he has been so profound an idiot as to fall in love with her? But ‘it is written’, as the followers of the prophet observe, and I must go. I have told Susan. We had a very affecting interview yesterday. How the poor little girl cried! And I hate to see a woman cry; it’s so excruciating to the feelings of a good-hearted fellow; and the prettiest woman’s nose is apt to get just a _leetle_ red when ‘the tears come trickling down, down, down.’ O Susan, that I should quote that familiar ballad of Lord Lovell when I write of your sorrow! But I suppose there is something of the _persifleur_ in my nature, for I don’t often find myself very earnest about anything. And so we walked up and down the Esplanade; she crying, and I talking. I flatter myself I talked rather well. There was just that dash of excitement about the business which makes a fellow talk well. But my eloquence was all of no avail; Alfred de Musset, Byron, George Sand, Rousseau, and Thomas Moore, all combined, cannot prevail against the tenets of the Sunday-school; and so we are to part, ‘in silence and tears, half broken-hearted, to sever,’ &c., unless I were prepared to sacrifice my prospects and put the fatal noose about my neck.