Finding myself in possession of certain facts which possess interest sufficient to warrant their publication, I am led to ask myself whether I shall put them in the form of a narrative. There are, evidently, two sides to this question. In the first place, I have a number of friends who write me letters, and tell me openly to my face, that they want me to go on writing. It doesn't make much difference to them, they say, what I write about,--only they want me to keep going. They have got used to seeing me, in one shape or another,--and I am a kind of habit with them, like a nap after dinner. They tell me not to be frightened about it,--to begin as dull as I like, and that I shall warm up, by-and-by, as old _Dutchman_ used to, who could hardly put one leg before the other when he started, but, after a while, got so limbered and straightened out by his work, that he dropped down into the forties, and, I think they say, into the thirties. _L'appétit vient en mangeant_, one of them said who talks French,--which, you know, means, that eating makes one hungry. I remember, when I sat down to that last book of mine, which you may perhaps have read, although I had the facts of the story, of course, all in my head, it seemed to me that I should never have the patience to tell them all; and yet, before I was through, I got so full of the scenes and characters I was talking about, that I had to bolt my door and lay in an extra bandanna, before I could trust myself to put my recollections and thoughts on paper. You don't expect a locomotive is going to start off with a train of thirty or forty thousand passengers, without straining a little,--do you? That isn't the way; but this is. _Puff!_ The wheels begin to turn, but very slowly. Papas hold up their little Johnnys to the car-windows to be kissed. _Puff----Puff!_ People shake hands from the platform to the cars, walking along by their side. _Puff--puff--puff!_ Now, then, Ma'am! pass out that tumbler pretty spry, out of which you have been swallowing that eternal "drink o' wotter," to which the human female of a certain social grade is so odiously addicted. _Puff, puff, puff, puff!_ Too late, old gentleman I unless you can do a mile in a good deal less than three minutes, carrying weight, in the shape of a valise in one hand and a carpet-bag in the other. That's the way with anything that's got any freight to carry. It's slow when it sets out;--but steam is steam,--and what's bred in the boiler will show in the driving-wheel, sooner or later.