protasis lies yet some way off.
If, I say, some child of the family, having chosen me out of the heap as a
capital fellow for a booby-trap, shall open me by hazard and, attracted by
the pictures, lug me off to the window-seat, why then God bless the child!
I shall come to my own. He will not understand much at the time, but he
will remember me with affection, and in due course he will give me to his
daughter among her wedding presents (much to her annoyance, but the
bridegroom will soothe her). This will happen through several generations
until I find myself an heirloom. . . ."

"You begin to assume that by this time you will be valuable.
Also permit me to remark that you have slipped into the present
indicative."

"As for the present indicative, I think you began it."

"No."

"Yes. But it doesn't matter. I begin precisely at the right moment to
assume a value which will be attached to me, not for my own sake, but on
account of dear grandpapa's book-plate and autograph on the fly-leaf. (He
was the humbug who never read me--a literary person; he acquired me as a
'review copy,' and only forbore to dispose of me because at the current
railway rates I should not have fetched the cost of carriage.)"

"Why talk of hindrances to publishing such a book, when you know full well
it will never be written?"

"I thought you would be driven to some such stupid knock-down argument.
Whether or not the book will ever be finished is a question that lies on
the knees of the gods. I am writing at it every day. And just such a
book was written once and even published; as I discovered the other day in
an essay by Mr. Austin Dobson. The author, I grant you, was a Dutchman
(Mr. Dobson calls him 'Vader Cats,') and the book contains everything from
a long didactic poem on Marriage (I also have written a long didactic poem
on Marriage) to a page on Children's Games. (My book shall have a chapter
on Children's Games, with their proper tunes.) As for poetry--poetry,
says Mr. Dobson, with our Dutch poet is not by any means a trickling rill
from Helicon: 'it is an inundation _a la mode du pays_, a flood in a flat
land, covering everything far and near with its sluggish waters.'
As for the illustrations, listen to this for the kind of thing I demand:--

"Perhaps the most interesting of these is to be found in the
large head-piece to the above-mentioned Children's Games, the
background of which exhibits the great square o