—­Ah, truest soul of womankind! 
Without thee, what were life? 
One bliss I cannot leave behind: 
I’ll take—­my—­precious wife!

—­The angel took a sapphire pen
And wrote in rainbow dew,
“The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too!”

—­“And is there nothing yet unsaid
Before the change appears? 
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!”

Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
I could not bear to leave them all;
I’ll take—­my—­girl—­and—­boys!

The smiling angel dropped his pen,—­
“Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!”

And so I laughed,—­my laughter woke
The household with its noise,—­
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the gray-haired boys.

CHAPTER IV

[I am so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain there, perhaps for years.  Of course I shall have a great many conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of different tone and on different subjects.  The talks are like the breakfasts,—­sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes dry.  You must take them as they come.  How can I do what all these letters ask me to?  No. 1. want serious and earnest thought.  No. 2. (letter smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell a “good storey” which he has copied out for me. (I suppose two letters before the word “good” refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand)—­more poetry.  No. 4. wants something that would be of use to a practical man.  (Prahctical mahn he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented)—­“more sentiment,”—­“heart’s outpourings.”—­

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table.  Their character will depend on many accidents,—­a good deal on the particular persons in the company to whom they were addressed.  It so happens that those which follow were mainly intended for the divinity-student and the school-mistress; though others, whom I need not mention, saw to interfere, with more or less propriety, in the conversation.  This is one of my privileges as a talker; and of course, if I was not talking for our whole company, I don’t expect all the readers of this periodical to be interested in my notes of what was said.  Still, I think there may be a few that will rather like this vein,—­possibly prefer it to a livelier one,—­serious young men, and young women generally, in life’s roseate parenthesis from—­years of age to—­inclusive.