—­If you could get that to her,—­he said,—­they tell me that ladies sometimes wear them in their hair.  If they are out of fashion, she can keep it till after they’re married, and then perhaps after a while there may be—­you know—­you know what I mean—­there may be larvae, that ’s what I ’m thinking there may be, and they ’ll like to look at it.

—­As he got out the word larvae, a faint sense of the ridiculous seemed to take hold of the Scarabee, and for the first and only time during my acquaintance with him a slight attempt at a smile showed itself on his features.  It was barely perceptible and gone almost as soon as seen, yet I am pleased to put it on record that on one occasion at least in his life the Scarabee smiled.

The old Master keeps adding notes and reflections and new suggestions to his interleaved volume, but I doubt if he ever gives them to the public.  The study he has proposed to himself does not grow easier the longer it is pursued.  The whole Order of Things can hardly be completely unravelled in any single person’s lifetime, and I suspect he will have to adjourn the final stage of his investigations to that more luminous realm where the Landlady hopes to rejoin the company of boarders who are nevermore to meet around her cheerful and well-ordered table.

The curtain has now fallen, and I show myself a moment before it to thank my audience and say farewell.  The second comer is commonly less welcome than the first, and the third makes but a rash venture.  I hope I have not wholly disappointed those who have been so kind to my predecessors.

To you, Beloved, who have never failed to cut the leaves which hold my record, who have never nodded over its pages, who have never hesitated in your allegiance, who have greeted me with unfailing smiles and part from me with unfeigned regrets, to you I look my last adieu as I bow myself out of sight, trusting my poor efforts to your always kind remembrance.

EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES

Autocrat—­professor—­poet.

At A bookstore.

Anno Domini 1972.

          A crazy bookcase, placed before
          A low-price dealer’s open door;
          Therein arrayed in broken rows
          A ragged crew of rhyme and prose,
          The homeless vagrants, waifs and strays
          Whose low estate this line betrays
          (Set forth the lesser birds to lime)
          your choice among these books, 1 dime!

Ho! dealer; for its motto’s sake
This scarecrow from the shelf I take;
Three starveling volumes bound in one,
Its covers warping in the sun. 
Methinks it hath a musty smell,
I like its flavor none too well,
But Yorick’s brain was far from dull,
Though Hamlet pah!’d, and dropped his skull.