Whom grasping Time so long has spared
   Life’s sweet illusions to pursue,
   The common lot of age have shared?

   In every pulse of Friendship’s heart
   There breeds unfelt a throb of pain,
   One hour must rend its links apart,
   Though years on years have forged the chain.

   So ends “The Boys,”—­a lifelong play. 
   We too must hear the Prompter’s call
   To fairer scenes and brighter day
   Farewell!  I let the curtain fall.

IV

If the reader thinks that all these talking Teacups came together by mere accident, as people meet at a boarding-house, I may as well tell him at once that he is mistaken.  If he thinks I am going to explain how it is that he finds them thus brought together, whether they form a secret association, whether they are the editors of this or that periodical, whether they are connected with some institution, and so on,—­I must disappoint him.  It is enough that he finds them in each other’s company, a very mixed assembly, of different sexes, ages, and pursuits; and if there is a certain mystery surrounds their meetings, he must not be surprised.  Does he suppose we want to be known and talked about in public as “Teacups”?  No; so far as we give to the community some records of the talks at our table our thoughts become public property, but the sacred personality of every Teacup must be properly respected.  If any wonder at the presence of one of our number, whose eccentricities might seem to render him an undesirable associate of the company, he should remember that some people may have relatives whom they feel bound to keep their eye on; besides the cracked Teacup brings out the ring of the sound ones as nothing else does.  Remember also that soundest teacup does not always hold the best tea, or the cracked teacup the worst.

This is a hint to the reader, who is not expected to be too curious about the individual Teacups constituting our unorganized association.

The Dictator Discourses.

I have been reading Balzac’s Peau de Chagrin.  You have all read the story, I hope, for it is the first of his wonderful romances which fixed the eyes of the reading world upon him, and is a most fascinating if somewhat fantastic tale.  A young man becomes the possessor of a certain magic skin, the peculiarity of which is that, while it gratifies every wish formed by its possessor, it shrinks in all its dimensions each time that a wish is gratified.  The young man makes every effort to ascertain the cause of its shrinking; invokes the aid of the physicist, the chemist, the student of natural history, but all in vain.  He draws a red line around it.  That same day he indulges a longing for a certain object.  The next morning there is a little interval between the red line and the skin, close to which it was traced.  So always, so inevitably.  As he lives on, satisfying one desire, one passion, after another, the process of shrinking continues.  A mortal disease sets in, which keeps pace with the shrinking skin, and his life and his talisman come to an end together.