We are not to grudge such interstitial and transitional matter as may promote an easy connection of parts and an elastic separation of them, and keep the reader's mind upon springs as it were.
HENRY TAYLOR'S Statesman.
Dear impatient readers,—you whom I know and who do not know me,—and you who are equally impatient, but whom I cannot call equally dear, because you are totally strangers to me in my out-of-cog character,—you who would have had me hurry on
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought,—1
you will not wonder, nor perhaps will you blame me now, that I do not hasten to the wedding day. The day on which Deborah left her father's house was the saddest that she had ever known till then; nor was there one of the bridal party who did not feel that this was the first of those events, inevitable and mournful all, by which their little circle would be lessened, and his or her manner of life or of existence changed.
1 SHAKESPEARE.
There is no checking the course of time. When the shadow on Hezekiah's dial went back, it was in the symbol only that the miracle was wrought: the minutes in every other horologe held their due course. But as Opifex of this opus, I when it seems good unto me, may take the hour-glass from Time's hand and let it rest at a stand-still, till I think fit to turn it and set the sands again in motion. You who have got into this my omnibus, know that like other omnibusses, its speed is to be regulated not according to your individual and perhaps contrariant wishes, but by my discretion.
Moreover I am not bound to ply with this omnibus only upon a certain line. In that case there would be just cause of complaint, if you were taken out of your road.