I will not say that I was pleased at
this; but I will tell her now, if by any chance she takes up the
work of her former servant, that I thought the better of her taste.
I cleared the decks after this lost engagement; had the necessary
interview with my father, which passed off not amiss; paid over my
share of the expense to the two little, active brothers, who rubbed
their hands as much, but methought skipped rather less than
formerly, having perhaps, these two also, embarked upon the
enterprise with some graceful illusions; and then, reviewing the
whole episode, I told myself that the time was not yet ripe, nor
the man ready; and to work I went again with my penny version-
books, having fallen back in one day from the printed author to the
manuscript student.
III
From this defunct periodical I am going to reprint one of my own
papers. The poor little piece is all tail-foremost. I have done
my best to straighten its array, I have pruned it fearlessly, and
it remains invertebrate and wordy. No self-respecting magazine
would print the thing; and here you behold it in a bound volume,
not for any worth of its own, but for the sake of the man whom it
purports dimly to represent and some of whose sayings it preserves;
so that in this volume of Memories and Portraits, Robert Young, the
Swanston gardener, may stand alongside of John Todd, the Swanston
shepherd.
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