it may be.

The "Man of Letters," so called, asked me, in a tone I did not exactly
like, whether I expected to live long enough to see a monarchy take the
place of a republic in this country.

--No,--said I,--I was thinking of something very different. I was
indulging a fancy of mine about the Man who is to sit at the foot of the
monument for one, or it may be two or three thousand years. As long as
the monument stands and there is a city near it, there will always be
a man to take the names of visitors and extract some small tribute from
their pockets, I suppose. I sometimes get thinking of the long,
unbroken succession of these men, until they come to look like one Man;
continuous in being, unchanging as the stone he watches, looking upon
the successive generations of human beings as they come and go, and
outliving all the dynasties of the world in all probability. It has come
to such a pass that I never speak to the Man of the Monument without
wanting to take my hat off and feeling as if I were looking down a vista
of twenty or thirty centuries.

The "Man of Letters," so called, said, in a rather contemptuous way,
I thought, that he had n't got so far as that. He was n't quite up to
moral reflections on toll-men and ticket-takers. Sentiment was n't his
tap.

He looked round triumphantly for a response: but the Capitalist was a
little hard of hearing just then; the Register of Deeds was browsing
on his food in the calm bovine abstraction of a quadruped, and paid no
attention; the Salesman had bolted his breakfast, and whisked himself
away with that peculiar alacrity which belongs to the retail dealer's
assistant; and the Member of the Haouse, who had sometimes seemed to be
impressed with his "tahlented mahn's" air of superiority to the rest of
us, looked as if he thought the speaker was not exactly parliamentary.
So he failed to make his point, and reddened a little, and was not in
the best humor, I thought, when he left the table. I hope he will not
let off any of his irritation on our poor little Scheherezade; but the
truth is, the first person a man of this sort (if he is what I think
him) meets, when he is out of humor, has to be made a victim of, and I
only hope our Young Girl will not have to play Jephthah's daughter.

And that leads me to say, I cannot help thinking that the kind of
criticism to which this Young Girl has been subjected from some person
or other, who is willing to be smart at her expense,