friends, on whom one has to tie five
hundred different colored bows (I assure you, Monsieur, the
ribbon-florists have this season produced _five hundred colors_) in
order to distinguish one from another! Heaven would not do this cruel
wrong without offering some apology--some mitigation.

Ah! you sigh. Your heart, then, _does_ forgive me--I knew it would. Give
me your hand, (such a soft, white hand!) I confess the proverb did
_sound_ a little naughty, but it's not _really_ so. At all events, it is
the _truth_--and, you know, we

'Can not tell a lie!' G. W.

Ah! this hand, though soft and white, is no longer plump and
unconscious; it has _suffered_! You, too, have been bored--ah! I _must_
kiss it.

'I, too, am human.'

I also have been bored! Come, now, you mistrust me no longer-and I--I
love you! I _love_ you, and, therefore, I want to amuse you; perhaps, by
Heaven's blessing, I may prove 'bad company' myself!

For I can not but believe that somewhere in the purple Future, or latent
amid the green leaves of the possible Fairy-dom, (in which some rich
enchanter of an uncle is to lea-re us all an heritage,) there bide,
waitingly, certain dear friends--delightful, daring, witty, and wicked
creatures--like yourself, O reader I--with whom I am destined to be,
spiritually, 'very much married indeed;' or if the expression sound too
polygamatical, let me simply say _lie._ [For Heaven's sake, accept that
as French, warm with an accent, and not as English, cold without one.]
_Lie_ means 'bound'--anchored, so to speak, to an intimate in an
amicable manner. And it is in their friendship--in their kind and tender
words and courteous deeds, and winsome ways, that I most truly _live_.

Where these dearmost ones may bide, I know not. Seven--yes--seven I have
met, whom I cherish like diamonds of delight in the cotton of memory. It
is worth noting, my dear, in this connection, that _sev-en_ is one of
the conjugations in Turkish of the root _sev_, or 'loving,' and 'them
old Turks,' you know--but I am digressing. Are there not still to come
seven--yea, seventy times seven, (I have mislaid my Koran, in which the
number is more accurately stated,) of my Friends of the Future!

But I know what they are like. Oh! the charming, delightful wretches,
how I enjoy looking at them--in fact, 'I admire to see' them--as they
sweep along through the golden halls of my Schloss Dream-berg. Such nice
clothes as they wear--the ducks! Such good