Because I should else have found no readers among my contemporaries. The readers—that is, the people of leisure—of my day are mostly women and preachers (the third sex usually having all they can do to take care of the other two), and neither will bite freely at any bait save Love. They will nibble at the hook, but a game rush—bait, hook, and all, at a gulp—that is elicited only by a novel. Love is the bait now. Three hundred years ago it was Hate, the ODIUM THEOLOGICUM. Three hundred years hence it will be—but I cannot guess what, and you will know, my almond-eyed boy,—almond-eyed and yellow of skin, though swearing by Shakespeare, and perhaps by Magna Charta and Habeas Corpus.
If, indeed, in your day—but enough! and so fare thee well, Confucian of far Cathay!
The piazza after breakfast, next morning. A bright, sunny day in the beginning of February, with a voluptuousness in the air hinting at the approach of spring. “How beautiful and sparkling the river looks!” said one of the girls. “And just to think,” she added, with a little stamp of her little foot, “we must bid farewell to it so soon!”
“That reminds me,” said Alice, rising briskly from the rocking-chair, in which she reclined, drinking in the balmy air and bright talk in half-dozing silence. But the silence and half-closed eyes were those of pussy awaiting the appearance of Mistress Mouse.
“That reminds me.” And giving a quick glance at Charley, as she passed him, she marched with a rapid, business-like tread, straight up to the Don. Charley prepared to weep. I must mention, in passing, that his way of weeping over Alice differed from her mother’s in this, that when the tears stood in his eyes, those windows of the soul were wide open, thereby revealing the fact that his ribs ached; whereas Mrs. Carter’s being shut tight, it was left entirely to conjecture whether she wept from pain or pleasure.
Alice planted her little self square in front of the towering figure of the Don, and looked him in the eyes as though expecting him to begin the conversation.
“What now, sauce-box?” asked Mrs. Carter, quickly, as though she felt that if she delayed a moment longer she would become, as usual, speechless; and a premonitory shake or two passing through her jolly figure showed that her prudence was not ill-judged. “What are you up to now?”
“Well?” said Alice, with her eyes fixed on those of the Don.
Charley dried his with his handkerchief, for he wanted to see everything. The Don (I regret to have to use the expression) was in a broad grin. As to Mrs. Carter, the faintest thread of hazel was still visible between the lids of her fast-closing orbs of light. Alice turned pettishly on her heel, and with her eyes retorted over her shoulder, twirled her thumbs.
It was evident that there was something amiss about Charley’s ribs. Not so with Mrs. Carter; for to any one surveying her person, ribs remained the merest hypothesis, based upon the analogy of other vertebrates; but the upper part of her spinal column gave way; that is, she lost control of her neck, and her head rested helplessly against the back of her chair.