Acting on this hint, I have reserved some admirable remarks, reflections, discourses, and tirades, until the story should be ended, and the other plate be ready for the subsidiary sermon.
And now that the proper time is come, that love of intruding one’s own wisdom in one’s own person on the reader, which has marred so many works of art, is in my case restrained—first, by pure fatigue; secondly, because the moral of this particular story stands out so clear in the narrative, that he who runs may read it without any sermon at all.
Those who will not take the trouble to gather my moral from the living tree, would not lift it out of my dead basket: would not unlock their jaw-bones to bite it, were I to thrust it into their very mouths.