not only I, the writer, but many of my readers, recognize in our own mental constitution an occasional obliquity of perception, not always detected at the time, but plain enough when looked back upon.  What extravagant fancies you and I have seriously entertained at one time or another!  What superstitious notions have got into our heads and taken possession of its empty chambers,—­or, in the language of science, seized on the groups of nerve-cells in some of the idle cerebral convolutions!

The writer, I say, becomes acquainted with his characters as he goes on.  They are at first mere embryos, outlines of distinct personalities.  By and by, if they have any organic cohesion, they begin to assert themselves.  They can say and do such and such things; such and such other things they cannot and must not say or do.  The story-writer’s and play-writer’s danger is that they will get their characters mixed, and make A say what B ought to have said.  The stronger his imaginative faculty, the less liable will the writer be to this fault; but not even Shakespeare’s power of throwing himself into his characters prevents many of his different personages from talking philosophy in the same strain and in a style common to them all.

You will often observe that authors fall in love with the imaginary persons they describe, and that they bestow affectionate epithets upon them which it may happen the reader does not consider in any way called for.  This is a pleasure to which they have a right.  Every author of a story is surrounded by a little family of ideal children, as dear to him, it may be, as are flesh-and-blood children to their parents.  You may forget all about the circle of Teacups to which I have introduced you,—­on the supposition that you have followed me with some degree of interest; but do you suppose that Number Five does not continue as a presence with me, and that my pretty Delilah has left me forever because she is going to be married?

No, my dear friend, our circle will break apart, and its different members will soon be to you as if they had never been.  But do you think that I can forget them?  Do you suppose that I shall cease to follow the love (or the loves; which do you think is the true word, the singular or the plural?) of Number Five and the young Tutor who is so constantly found in her company?  Do you suppose that I do not continue my relations with the “Cracked Teacup,”—­the poor old fellow with whom I have so much in common, whose counterpart, perhaps, you may find in your own complex personality?

I take from the top shelf of the hospital department of my library—­the section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish rhymesters, and silly eccentrics—­one of the least conspicuous and most hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual almshouse.  I open it and look through its pages.  It is a story.  I have looked into it once before,—­on its first reception as a gift from the author.  I try to recall some of the names I see there:  they mean nothing to me, but I venture to say the author cherishes them all, and cries over them as he did when he was writing their history.  I put the book back among its dusty companions, and, sitting down in my reflective rocking-chair, think how others must forget, and how I shall remember, the company that gathered about this table.