H. and myself.  After cordially recognizing our forgotten relationship, now for the first time called to mind, we parted, my guest leaving me for his own home.  We had been sitting in my library on the lower floor.  On going up-stairs where Mrs. H. was sitting alone, just as I entered the room she pushed a paper across the table towards me, saying that perhaps it might interest me.  It was one of a number of old family papers which she had brought from the house of her mother, recently deceased.

I opened the paper, which was an old-looking document, and found that it was a copy, perhaps made in this century, of the will of that same Mary S. about whom we had been talking down-stairs.

If there is such a thing as a purely accidental coincidence this must be considered an instance of it.

All one can say about it is that it seems very unlikely that such a coincidence should occur, but it did.

I have not tried to keep my own personality out of these stories.  But after all, how little difference it makes whether or not a writer appears with a mask on which everybody can take off,—­whether he bolts his door or not, when everybody can look in at his windows, and all his entrances are at the mercy of the critic’s skeleton key and the jimmy of any ill-disposed assailant!

The company have been silent listeners for the most part; but the reader will have a chance to become better acquainted with some cf them by and by.

II

To the reader.

I know that it is a hazardous experiment to address myself again to a public which in days long past has given me a generous welcome.  But my readers have been, and are, a very faithful constituency.  I think there are many among them who would rather listen to an old voice they are used to than to a new one of better quality, even if the “childish treble” should betray itself now and then in the tones of the overtired organ.  But there must be others,—­I am afraid many others,—­who will exclaim:  “He has had his day, and why can’t he be content?  We don’t want literary revenants, superfluous veterans, writers who have worn out their welcome and still insist on being attended to.  Give us something fresh, something that belongs to our day and generation.  Your morning draught was well enough, but we don’t care for your evening slip-slop.  You are not in relation with us, with our time, our ideas, our aims, our aspirations.”

Alas, alas! my friend,—­my young friend, for your hair is not yet whitened,—­I am afraid you are too nearly right.  No doubt,—­no doubt.  Teacups are not coffee-cups.  They do not hold so much.  Their pallid infusion is but a feeble stimulant compared with the black decoction served at the morning board.  And so, perhaps, if wisdom like yours were compatible with years like mine, I should drop my pen and make no further attempts upon your patience.