No. IV.
“Authors who acquire a reputation by pilfering all their beauties from others, may be compared to Harlequin and his snuff, which he collected by borrowing a pinch out of every man’s box he could meet, and then retailed it under the pompous title of ‘tabác de mille fleurs.’”
Fitzosborne’s Letters.
“If the work cannot boast of a regular plan, (in which respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensible,) it may yet boast that the reflections are naturally suggested always by the preceding passage.”
Cowper’s Letters.
No est tan bravo il leon, como se pinta—the lion is not so fierce as his picture—says the Spanish proverb, and such will doubtless be your exclamation, fair, gentle, indulgent, or judicious reader, (by whichever title you may please to be addressed,) when you discover that the heroes of the Coffee Club, invested by your scrutinizing sagacity with so many fictitious attributes, whether of honor or of dishonor, are in truth but cognate atoms with yourself in making up the mass of our small and secluded community. Nor will your self-satisfaction be at all enhanced, by the remembrance of the astute conjectures, ‘positive certainties,’ ‘perfect convictions,’ and ‘confidential informations,’ which have afforded you matter of exultation for a season, but are, by the revealment of the truth, shown to be unfounded, and if cherished with vanity, ridiculous. Each, however, may soothe his chagrin, with the assurance that no one was wiser than himself, and that the secret, which baffled his endeavors, not even the talismanic power of woman’s curiosity could elicit.
It is the eve of the farewell exercises of the class, and the last meeting of the Coffee Club. Tristo had thrown gloom upon our spirits, by a mournful epitaph upon the pleasures and the duties, now buried in the past—but Pulito has reversed our feelings by a brilliant epithalamium, for our coming bridal day, on which we are to wed the world. So is it in life—we shed one tear over the past, and hasten on to catch the future.
“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”
In such a mood, the thoughts of all naturally reverted to the time when first we entered upon that stage in the journey of life, which we have now completed. As we traced our progress onward, and recalled our errors and our follies, our hopes and disappointments, our attainments and our short-comings, the desire of sympathy, of consolation, and encouragement, led to a full and free expression of our thoughts and feelings. Apple, however, as his cigar wreathed forth its exhalations,