block of the reluctant quarry of my brain--due to
you by agreement on the first of December, one
unconceived tale! But though we do so strangely
bargain the invisible wares of the imagination,
deliverable, like merchandize, on a certain day,
the contractor is still liable to the caprices of
the world he trades from, and your order on me for
fancy yet undug, must, I fear, be protested. You
would not believe me if I were to tell you
literally why. But the truth is that I, and a
certain cave (mentioned by Humboldt, on the banks
of the Oronookoo, which he calls a "subterranean
organ,") can only give out music in certain states
of the weather. With the dry, sharp, icy north wind
of the last few days, I could no more write than I
could supply electricity to Morse's wire.

But--no failure is _quite_ twenty shillings in the
pound. What say you to the assets? The statue will
not be forth coming--but will you have the model,
after which the undug block was to have been
chiseled? Shall I send you the literal truth which
I had intended to drape with imagination--tell the
facts of real life which I had designed to weave
into a story. I shall thus, at least, clear
_yourself_ of the non-fulfillment of the promise of
your pre-advertised contents, and (engaging to send
you a story properly completed for the next number)
shall effect, perhaps, a compromise for my
delinquent punctuality.

This, then, is the thread of literal truth which
was to have run through the fancy-woof of my story.

Some years ago, after a year or two of residence in
different cities of Italy, I found myself very much
at home in Naples. It was an unusually gay
season--the concentration of the rank and fashion
of the floating society of travelers varying
between Rome, Florence, and Naples, very much as it
does, in our country, between the different
watering-places--by caprices that no one can
foresee. The English people of rank, more
particularly, were in very great force; and the
blonde moustaches, so much admired in the
dark-haired South, and the skins of alabaster and