The Boys,"--a lifelong play.
We too must hear the Prompter's call
To fairer scenes and brighter day
Farewell! I let the curtain fall.

IV

If the reader thinks that all these talking Teacups came together by
mere accident, as people meet at a boarding-house, I may as well tell
him at once that he is mistaken. If he thinks I am going to explain
how it is that he finds them thus brought together, whether they form
a secret association, whether they are the editors of this or that
periodical, whether they are connected with some institution, and so
on,--I must disappoint him. It is enough that he finds them in each
other's company, a very mixed assembly, of different sexes, ages, and
pursuits; and if there is a certain mystery surrounds their meetings,
he must not be surprised. Does he suppose we want to be known and talked
about in public as "Teacups"? No; so far as we give to the community
some records of the talks at our table our thoughts become public
property, but the sacred personality of every Teacup must be properly
respected. If any wonder at the presence of one of our number, whose
eccentricities might seem to render him an undesirable associate of the
company, he should remember that some people may have relatives whom
they feel bound to keep their eye on; besides the cracked Teacup brings
out the ring of the sound ones as nothing else does. Remember also that
soundest teacup does not always hold the best tea, or the cracked teacup
the worst.

This is a hint to the reader, who is not expected to be too curious
about the individual Teacups constituting our unorganized association.

The Dictator Discourses.

I have been reading Balzac's Peau de Chagrin. You have all read the
story, I hope, for it is the first of his wonderful romances which fixed
the eyes of the reading world upon him, and is a most fascinating if
somewhat fantastic tale. A young man becomes the possessor of a certain
magic skin, the peculiarity of which is that, while it gratifies every
wish formed by its possessor, it shrinks in all its dimensions each time
that a wish is gratified. The young man makes every effort to ascertain
the cause of its shrinking; invokes the aid of the physicist, the
chemist, the student of natural history, but all in vain. He draws a
red line around it. That same day he indulges a longing for a certain
object. The next morning there is a little interval between the red line
and the skin, close to