A few months after we read of him in a police court.  How had I come to know him, to divine him?  Nothing shall convince me that I have not seen that man in the world of spirits.  In the world of spirits and water I know I did:  but that is a mere quibble of words.  I was not surprised when he spoke in an Irish brogue.  I had had cognizance of him before somehow.  Who has not felt that little shock which arises when a person, a place, some words in a book (there is always a collocation) present themselves to you, and you know that you have before met the same person, words, scene, and so forth?

They used to call the good Sir Walter the “Wizard of the North.”  What if some writer should appear who can write so enchantingly that he shall be able to call into actual life the people whom he invents?  What if Mignon, and Margaret, and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now (though I don’t say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder?  Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide silent in?  Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches?  And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby’s arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse, with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire?  I say to you, I look rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people.  Were any of them to enter, I think I should not be very much frightened.  Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have had with them!  We do not see each other very often, but when we do, we are ever happy to meet.  I had a capital half-hour with Jacob Faithful last night; when the last sheet was corrected, when “Finis” had been written, and the printer’s boy, with the copy, was safe in Green Arbor Court.

So you are gone, little printer’s boy, with the last scratches and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis at the story’s end.  The last corrections?  I say those last corrections seem never to be finished.  A plague upon the weeds!  Every day, when I walk in my own little literary garden-plot, I spy some, and should like to have a spud, and root them out.  Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy.  That turning back to the old pages produces anything but elation of mind.  Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of them?  Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages!  Oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over again!  But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear memory.  Yet a few chapters more, and then the last:  after which, behold Finis itself come to an end, and the Infinite begun.

ON A PEAL OF BELLS.