flavor, I will give you a
richer draught--mayhap a beaker of Hippocrene.

Till then, may God's blessing be on us both, though neither of us deserve
it.

CLINTON PLACE, 1856.

PROLOGUE.

_It hath beene sayed, and it seemeth soe untoe me, that ye man who
writes a booke maist have much vanitie and vexation of spirite._

YE TWO POORE AUTHORS.

PROLOGUE.

"Mrs. Muggins!"

"Yes, sir."

"Say that I am sick. Say I am dead--buried--out of town. In short, say
anything you will; but deny my existence to every one who calls, with the
exception of Mr. Barescythe."

"Yes, sir."

"I am going to write a novel, Mrs. Muggins!"

That lady did not exhibit much emotion.

"Yes, sir."

And Mrs. Muggins ambled out of the room-door, to which she had been
summoned by some peremptory appeals of my bell. I was somewhat shocked at
the cool manner with which Mrs. Muggins received the literary intelligence;
but she, poor, simple soul, did not know that my greatness was a-ripening.

"Some of these days," said I to myself, turning toward the window, "some of
these days, mayhap a hundred years hence, as the stranger passes through
Washington Parade Ground, this house--wrinkled and old then--will be
pointed out to his wonder-loving eyes as the one in which my novel was
written; and the curious stranger will cut his name on the walls of the
room which I never occupied, and carry away a slice of the door-step!"

I immediately fell in love with this fascinating thought, and followed it
up.

The slender trees which now inhabit the Parade Ground had grown
immensely--the trunks of some were three feet in diameter, and around them
all was a massive iron railing. The brick and brownstone houses on Waverly
Place and Fourth-street had long been removed, and huge edifices with
cast-iron fronts supplanted them. I looked in vain for the little
drug-store on the corner with its red and green bottles, and the
fruit-man's below with its show of yellow bananas and sour oranges. The
University, dimly seen through the interlacing branches, was a classic
ruin.

Everything was changed and new.

All the old land-marks were gone, save the Parade Ground, and one quaint
old house facing Mac Dougal-street: the which house was propped up with
beams, for, long and long ago, before "the memory of the oldest inhabitant"
even, an author, a sweet quiet man, once wrote a famous book there, and th