Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Thackerayin? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enterwith a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? Anddearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby’s arm; and TittlebatTitmouse, with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummlescompany of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and SirRoger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen,the Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire?I say to you, I look rather wistfully towards the window,musing upon these people. Were any of them toenter, I think I should not be very much frightened.Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have had withthem! We do not see each other very often, but whenwe do, we are ever happy to meet. I had a capital halfhourwith Jacob Faithful last night; when the last sheetwas corrected, when “Finis” had been written, and theprinter’s boy, with the copy, was safe in Green ArborCourt.So you are gone, little printer’s boy, with the lastscratches and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourishby way of Finis at the story’s end. The last corrections?I say those last corrections seem never to be finished.A plague upon the weeds! Every day, when I walkin my own little literary garden-plot, I spy some, andshould like to have a spud, and root them out. Those idlewords, neighbor, are past remedy. That turning back tothe old pages produces anything but elation of mind.Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel someof them? Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages! Oh,the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, theold conversations over and over again! But now and againa kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dearmemory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last: afterwhich, behold Finis itself come to an end, and theInfinite begun.243