What a great flutter was created a few years ago when a blind multi-millionaire of New York offered to pay a million dollars in cash to any scientist, savant or surgeon in the world who would restore his sight. Of course he would! It was no price at all to offer for the service--considering the millions remaining. It was no more to him than it would be to me to offer ten dollars for a peep at Paradise. Poor as I am I will give any man in the world one hundred dollars in cash who will enable me to remove every trace of memory of M. Alexandre Dumas' “Three Guardsmen,” so that I may open that glorious book with the virgin capacity of youth to enjoy its full delight. More; I will duplicate the same offer for any one or all of the following: “Les Miserables,” of M. Hugo. “Don Quixote,” of Senor Cervantes. “Vanity Fair,” of Mr. Thackeray. “David Copperfield,” of Mr. Dickens. “The Cloister and the Hearth,” of Mr. Reade. And if my good friend, Isaac of York, is lending money at the old stand and will take pianos, pictures, furniture, dress suits and plain household plate as collateral, upon even moderate valuation, I will go fifty dollars each upon the following: “The Count of Monte Cristo,” of M. Dumas. “The Wandering Jew,” of M. Sue. “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.,” of Mr. Thackeray. “Treasure Island,” of Mr. Robbie Stevenson. “The Vicar of Wakefield,” of Mr. Goldsmith. “Pere Goriot,” of M. de Balzac. “Ivanhoe,” of Baronet Scott. (Any one previously unnamed of the whole layout of M. Dumas, excepting only a paretic volume entitled “The Conspirators.”) Now, the man who can do the trick for one novel can do it for all--and there's a thousand dollars waiting to be earned, and a blessing also. It's a bald “bluff,” of course, because it can't be done as we all know. I might offer a million with safety. If it ever could have been done the noble intellectual aristocracy of novel-readers would have been reduced to a condition of penury and distress centuries ago. For, who can put fetters upon even the smallest second of eternity? Who can repeat a joy or duplicate a sweet sorrow? Who has ever had more than one first sweetheart, or more than one first kiss under the honeysuckle? Or has ever seen his name in print for the first time, ever again? Is it any wonder that all these inexplicable longings, these hopeless hopes, were summed up in the heart-cry of Faust-- “Stay, yet awhile, O moment of beauty.” * * * * * Yet, I maintain, Dr. Faustus was a weak creature. He begged to be given another and wholly different chance to linger with beauty. How much nobler the magnificent courage of the veteran novel-reader, who in the old age of his service, asks only that he may be permitted to do again all that he has done, blindly, humbly, loyally, as before.