without me.  We are literary cannibals, and our writers live on each other and each other’s productions to a fearful extent.  What the mulberry leaf is to the silk-worm, the author’s book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the critical larva; that feed upon it.  It furnishes them with food and clothing.  The process may not be agreeable to the mulberry leaf or to the printed page; but without it the leaf would not have become the silk that covers the empress’s shoulders, and but for the critic the author’s book might never have reached the scholar’s table.  Scribblers will feed on each other, and if we insist on being scribblers we must consent to be fed on.  We must try to endure philosophically what we cannot help, and ought not, I suppose, to wish to help.

It is the custom at our table to vary the usual talk, by the reading of short papers, in prose or verse, by one or more of The Teacups, as we are in the habit of calling those who make up our company.  Thirty years ago, one of our present circle—­“Teacup Number Two,” The Professor,—­read a paper on Old Age, at a certain Breakfast-table, where he was in the habit of appearing.  That paper was published at the time, and has since seen the light in other forms.  He did not know so much about old age then as he does now, and would doubtless write somewhat differently if he took the subject up again.  But I found that it was the general wish that another of our company should let us hear what he had to say about it.  I received a polite note, requesting me to discourse about old age, inasmuch as I was particularly well qualified by my experience to write in an authoritative way concerning it.  The fact is that I,—­for it is myself who am speaking,—­have recently arrived at the age of threescore years and twenty,—­fourscore years we may otherwise call it.  In the arrangement of our table, I am Teacup Number One, and I may as well say that I am often spoken of as The Dictator.  There is nothing invidious in this, as I am the oldest of the company, and no claim is less likely to excite jealousy than that of priority of birth.

I received congratulations on reaching my eightieth birthday, not only from our circle of Teacups, but from friends, near and distant, in large numbers.  I tried to acknowledge these kindly missives with the aid of a most intelligent secretary; but I fear that there were gifts not thanked for, and tokens of good-will not recognized.  Let any neglected correspondent be assured that it was not intentionally that he or she was slighted.  I was grateful for every such mark of esteem; even for the telegram from an unknown friend in a distant land, for which I cheerfully paid the considerable charge which the sender doubtless knew it would give me pleasure to disburse for such an expression of friendly feeling.

I will not detain the reader any longer from the essay I have promised.

This is the paper read to The Teacups.