Roundabout Papers | Page 8

so it would to read through
"Howel's Letters" from beginning to end, or to eat up the whole of a
ham; but a slice on occasion may have a relish: a dip into the volume at
random and so on for a page or two: and now and then a smile; and
presently a gape; and the book drops out of your hand; and so, bon soir,
and pleasant dreams to you. I have frequently seen men at clubs asleep
over their humble servant's works, and am always pleased. Even at a
lecture I don't mind, if they don't snore. Only the other day when my
friend A. said, "You've left off that Roundabout business, I see; very
glad you have," I joined in the general roar of laughter at the table. I
don't care a fig whether Archilochus likes the papers or no. You don't
like partridge, Archilochus, or porridge, or what not? Try some other
dish. I am not going to force mine down your throat, or quarrel with
you if you refuse it. Once in America a clever and candid woman said
to me, at the close of a dinner, during which I had been sitting beside
her, "Mr. Roundabout, I was told I should not like you; and I don't."
"Well, ma'am," says I, in a tone of the most unfeigned simplicity, "I
don't care." And we became good friends immediately, and esteemed
each other ever after.
So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and say,

"Fudge!" and pass on to another, I for one shall not be in the least
mortified. If you say, "What does he mean by calling this paper On
Two Children in Black, when there's nothing about people in black at
all, unless the ladies he met (and evidently bored) at dinner, were black
women? What is all this egotistical pother? A plague on his I's!" My
dear fellow, if you read "Montaigne's Essays," you must own that he
might call almost any one by the name of any other, and that an essay
on the Moon or an essay on Green Cheese would be as appropriate a
title as one of his on Coaches, on the Art of Discoursing, or Experience,
or what you will. Besides, if I HAVE a subject (and I have) I claim to
approach it in a roundabout manner.
You remember Balzac's tale of the Peau de Chagrin, and how every
time the possessor used it for the accomplishment of some wish the
fairy Peau shrank a little and the owner's life correspondingly shortened?
I have such a desire to be well with my public that I am actually giving
up my favorite story. I am killing my goose, I know I am. I can't tell my
story of the children in black after this; after printing it, and sending it
through the country. When they are gone to the printer's these little
things become public property. I take their hands. I bless them. I say,
"Good-by, my little dears." I am quite sorry to part with them: but the
fact is, I have told all my friends about them already, and don't dare to
take them about with me any more.
Now every word is true of this little anecdote, and I submit that there
lies in it a most curious and exciting little mystery. I am like a man who
gives you the last bottle of his '25 claret. It is the pride of his cellar; he
knows it, and he has a right to praise it. He takes up the bottle,
fashioned so slenderly--takes it up tenderly, cants it with care, places it
before his friends, declares how good it is, with honest pride, and
wishes he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine in his
cellar. Si quid novisti, &c., I shall be very glad to hear from you. I
protest and vow I am giving you the best I have.
Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall never probably know
to my dying day. They were very pretty little men, with pale faces, and
large, melancholy eyes; and they had beautiful little hands, and little
boots, and the finest little shirts, and black paletots lined with the
richest silk; and they had picture-books in several languages, English,
and French, and German, I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking

little men I never set eyes on. They were travelling with a very
handsome, pale lady in mourning, and a maid- servant dressed in black,
too; and on the lady's face there was the deepest grief. The little boys
clambered and played about the carriage, and she sat watching. It was a
railway-carriage from Frankfort to Heidelberg.
I saw at once that she was the mother of those