But about that book I saw some time ago. You, of course, remember that prayer in "Tom Sawyer" (or somewhere else in Mark Twain) where the great-hearted minister called upon the Lord to bless the President of the United States, the President's Cabinet, the Senate of the United States, the governors of each of the states, and their legislatures, the mayors of all the cities, and all the towns, of the United States, and the inhabitants--grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and wives, husbands and fathers, sons and daughters, bachelors and little children--of every hamlet, town and city of the United States, also of all the countryside thereof. Well, this book of which I am speaking,--this minister in the august range and compass of his prayer had nothing on its dedication. It was published, as I recollect, by the author; printed on very woody wood-pulp paper by a job press, and had a coarse screen frontispiece portrait of the author, whose name has long since left me. What it was about I do not remember. That is a little matter. It lives in my mind, and should live in the memory of the world, by its dedication; which, I recall, in part was: "To the Sultan of Turkey--the Emperor of Japan--the Czar of Russia--the Emperor of Germany--the President of France--the King of England--the President of the United States--and to God." But it was in an elder day that they really knew how to write sonorous dedications. If I should write a book (and the idea of having one to dedicate tempts me greatly) I'd pick out some important personage, such as Benjamin De Casseres, or Frank Crowinshield, or Charles Hanson Towne, or somebody like that. Then I would take as the model for my dedication that one, say, of Boswell's to Sir Joshua Reynolds. I am afraid you have not read it lately. And so, for the joy the meeting of it again will give you, I will copy it out. It goes as follows: My Dear Sir,--Every liberal motive that can actuate an Authour in the dedication of his labours, concurs in directing me to you, as the person to whom the following Work should be inscribed.