“Bad luck to them, then!”

“The same to you!”

“Caramba” says the Spaniard.

“--------,” says the Englishman.

And so the forms of diplomacy are fulfilled; and of Havana, more in my next.

[To be continued.]

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

The Professor finds a Fly in his Teacup.

I have a long theological talk to relate, which must be dull reading to some of my young and vivacious friends.  I don’t know, however, that any of them have entered into a contract to read all that I write, or that I have promised always to write to please them.  What if I should sometimes write to please myself?

Now you must know that there are a great many things which interest me, to some of which this or that particular class of readers may be totally indifferent.  I love Nature, and human nature, its thoughts, affections, dreams, aspirations, delusions,—­Art in all its forms,—­virtu in all its eccentricities,—­old stories from black-letter volumes and yellow manuscripts, and new projects out of hot brains not yet imbedded in the snows of age.  I love the generous impulses of the reformer; but not less does my imagination feed itself upon the old litanies, so often warmed by the human breath upon which they were wafted to heaven that they glow through our frames like our own heart’s blood.  I hope I love good men and women; I know that they never speak a word to me, even if it be of question or blame, that I do not take pleasantly, if it is expressed with a reasonable amount of human kindness.

I have before me at this time a beautiful and affecting letter, which I have hesitated to answer, though the postmark upon it gave its direction, and the name is one which is known to all, in some of its representatives.  It contains no reproach, only a delicately-hinted fear.  Speak gently, as this dear lady has spoken, and there is no heart so insensible that it does not answer to the appeal, no intellect so virile that it does not own a certain allegiance to the claims of age, of childhood, of sensitive and timid natures, when they plead with it not to look at those sacred things by the broad daylight which they see in mystic shadow.  How grateful would it be to make perpetual peace with these pleading saints and their confessors, by the simple act that silences all complainings!  Sleep, sleep, sleep! says the Arch-Enchantress of them all,—­and pours her dark and potent anodyne, distilled over the fires that consumed her foes,—­its large, round drops changing, as we look, into the beads of her convert’s rosary!  Silence! the pride of reason! cries another, whose whole life is spent in reasoning down reason.