The truth is,
no man should be assailed by a new idea before he has dined, and I,
having had three years' opportunity of studying man nature, met my
deserts when the above answer was given. So I still looked amiable, and
behaved very prettily till dinner was over, and then John, having
subsided into dressing gown, slippers, easy chair, and good nature, I
remarked again:
'John, I think of writing an article for THE CONTINENTAL
MONTHLY.'
'How shall you begin it?' said he.
'Well, I haven't exactly settled on a beginning yet, but--'
'Exactly! I supposed so!' remarked this barbarian.
Unfortunately, he knew my weak point, for hadn't he been allowed to see
a desk full of magnificent middles, only wanting a beginning and an end,
and a publisher, and some readers, to place me in the front ranks of our
modern essayists, side by side with 'Spare Hours,' and the 'Country
Parson,' and 'Gail Hamilton?'
The fact is, I have always been brimming over with brilliant ideas on
all sorts of subjects, which never would arrange themselves or be
arranged under any given head, but presented a series of remarkable
literary fragments, jotted down on stray bits of paper, in old account
books and diaries, and even, on one or two occasions, when seized by a
sudden inspiration, on a smooth stone, taken from the brook, a fair
sheet of birch bark, and the front of a pew in a white-painted country
church.
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