the children and grandchildren of my first set of readers, that for some little time longer, at least, it will continue to be read, and even to be a favorite with some of its readers.  Non omnis moriar is a pleasant thought to one who has loved his poor little planet, and will, I trust, retain kindly recollections of it through whatever wilderness of worlds he may be called to wander in his future pilgrimages.  I say “poor little planet.”  Ever since I had a ten cent look at the transit of Venus, a few years ago, through the telescope in the Mall, the earth has been wholly different to me from what it used to be.  I knew from books what a speck it is in the universe, but nothing ever brought the fact home like the sight of the sister planet sailing across the sun’s disk, about large enough for a buckshot, not large enough for a full-sized bullet.  Yes, I love the little globule where I have spent more than fourscore years, and I like to think that some of my thoughts and some of my emotions may live themselves over again when I am sleeping.  I cannot thank all the kind readers of the “Autocrat” who are constantly sending me their acknowledgments.  If they see this printed page, let them be assured that a writer is always rendered happier by being told that he has made a fellow-being wiser or better, or even contributed to his harmless entertainment.  This a correspondent may take for granted, even if his letter of grateful recognition receives no reply.  It becomes more and more difficult for me to keep up with my correspondents, and I must soon give it up as impossible.

“The Professor at the Breakfast Table” followed immediately on the heels of the “Autocrat.”  The Professor was the alter ego of the first personage.  In the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and in this second series no great effort was made to create a character wholly unlike the first.  The Professor was more outspoken, however, on religious subjects, and brought down a good deal of hard language on himself and the author to whom he owed his existence.  I suppose he may have used some irritating expressions, unconsciously, but not unconscientiously, I am sure.  There is nothing harder to forgive than the sting of an epigram.  Some of the old doctors, I fear, never pardoned me for saying that if a ship, loaded with an assorted cargo of the drugs which used to be considered the natural food of sick people, went to the bottom of the sea, it would be “all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.”  If I had not put that snapper on the end of my whip-lash, I might have got off without the ill temper which my antithesis provoked.  Thirty years set that all right, and the same thirty years have so changed the theological atmosphere that such abusive words as “heretic” and “infidel,” applied to persons who differ from the old standards of faith, are chiefly interesting as a test of breeding, being seldom used by any people above the social half-caste