side her, "Mr.
Roundabout, I was told I should not like you; and I don't." "Well,
ma'am," says I, in a tone of the most unfeigned simplicity, "I don't
care." And we became good friends immediately, and esteemed each other
ever after.

So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and say, "Fudge!"
and pass on to another, I for one shall not be in the least mortified.
If you say, "What does he mean by calling this paper On Two Children
in Black, when there's nothing about people in black at all, unless the
ladies he met (and evidently bored) at dinner, were black women? What
is all this egotistical pother? A plague on his I's!" My dear fellow,
if you read "Montaigne's Essays," you must own that he might call almost
any one by the name of any other, and that an essay on the Moon or an
essay on Green Cheese would be as appropriate a title as one of his on
Coaches, on the Art of Discoursing, or Experience, or what you will.
Besides, if I HAVE a subject (and I have) I claim to approach it in a
roundabout manner.

You remember Balzac's tale of the Peau de Chagrin, and how every time
the possessor used it for the accomplishment of some wish the fairy Peau
shrank a little and the owner's life correspondingly shortened? I have
such a desire to be well with my public that I am actually giving up
my favorite story. I am killing my goose, I know I am. I can't tell
my story of the children in black after this; after printing it, and
sending it through the country. When they are gone to the printer's
these little things become public property. I take their hands. I bless
them. I say, "Good-by, my little dears." I am quite sorry to part with
them: but the fact is, I have told all my friends about them already,
and don't dare to take them about with me any more.

Now every word is true of this little anecdote, and I submit that there
lies in it a most curious and exciting little mystery. I am like a man
who gives you the last bottle of his '25 claret. It is the pride of his
cellar; he knows it, and he has a right to praise it. He takes up the
bottle, fashioned so slenderly--takes it up tenderly, cants it with
care, places it before his friends, declares how good it is, with honest
pride, and wishes he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine
in his cellar. Si quid novisti, &c., I shall be very glad to hear from
you. I protest and vow I am giving you the best I have.

Well, who those little boys in black were, I sha