I have never before been huddled out of the world in this way. I
take this rather premature obituary as a hint that, unless I come to
some arrangement with my well-meaning but insatiable correspondents, it
would be as well to leave it in type, for I cannot bear much longer the
load they lay upon me. I will explain myself on this point after I have
told my readers what has frightened me.

I am beginning to think this room where we take our tea is more like a
tinder-box than a quiet and safe place for "a party in a parlor." It is
true that there are at least two or three incombustibles at our table,
but it looks to me as if the company might pair off before the season
is over, like the crew of Her Majesty's ship the Mantelpiece,--three
or four weddings clear our whole table of all but one or two of the
impregnables. The poem we found in the sugar-bowl last week first opened
my eyes to the probable state of things. Now, the idea of having to tell
a love-story,--perhaps two or three love-stories,--when I set out
with the intention of repeating instructive, useful, or entertaining
discussions, naturally alarms me. It is quite true that many things
which look to me suspicious may be simply playful. Young people (and we
have several such among The Teacups) are fond of make-believe courting
when they cannot have the real thing,--"flirting," as it used to be
practised in the days of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and
more questionable recreation which has reached us from the home of the
cicisbeo. Whatever comes of it, I shall tell what I see, and take the
consequences.

But I am at this moment going to talk in my own proper person to my
own particular public, which, as I find by my correspondence, is a very
considerable one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally
pleasant relations.

I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives six hundred letters a
day. Perhaps he does not receive six hundred letters every day, but if
he gets anything like half that number daily, what can he do with them?
There was a time when he was said to answer all his correspondents. It
is understood, I think, that he has given up doing so in these later
days.

I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even sixty letters a day,
but I do receive a good many, and have told the public of the fact
from time to time, under the pressure of their constantly increasing
exertions. As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be