My dear friends around the teacups, and at that wider board where I am now entertaining, or trying to entertain, my company, is it not as plain to you as it is to me that I had better leave such tasks as that which I am just finishing to those who live in a more interesting period of life than one which, in the order of nature, is next door to decrepitude? Ought I not to regret having undertaken to report the doings and sayings of the members of the circle which you have known as The Teacups? Dear, faithful reader, whose patient eyes have followed my reports through these long months, you and I are about parting company. Perhaps you are one of those who have known me under another name, in those far-off days separated from these by the red sea of the great national conflict. When you first heard the tinkle of the teaspoons, as the table was being made ready for its guests, you trembled for me, in the kindness of your hearts. I do not wonder that you did,--I trembled for myself. But I remembered the story of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was seen all of a tremor just as he was going into action. “How is this?” said a brother officer to him. “Surely you are not afraid?” “No,” he answered, “but my flesh trembles at the thought of the dangers into which my intrepid spirit will carry me.” I knew the risk of undertaking to carry through a series of connected papers. And yet I thought it was better to run that risk, more manly, more sensible, than to give way to the fears which made my flesh tremble as did Sir Cloudesley Shovel's. For myself the labor has been a distraction, and one which came at a time when it was needed. Sometimes, as in one of those poems recently published,--the reader will easily guess which,--the youthful spirit has come over me with such a rush that it made me feel just as I did when I wrote the history of the “One-hoss Shay” thirty years ago. To repeat one of my comparisons, it was as if an early fruit had ripened on a graft upon an old, steady-going tree, to the astonishment of all its later-maturing products. I should hardly dare to say so much as this if I had not heard a similar opinion expressed by others. Once committed to my undertaking, there was no turning back. It is true that I had said I might stop at any moment, but after one or two numbers it seemed as if there were an informal pledge to carry the series on, as in former cases, until I had completed my dozen instalments.