Cigar-stump out now, and consequently have become very bitter on
more persevering sinners. I say I take an interest in our Scheherezade,
but I rather think it is more paternal than anything else, though my
heart did give that jump. It has jumped a good many times without
anything very remarkable coming of it.
This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us all, or most of us,
together in a new way, and it wouldn't be very odd if some of us should
become better acquainted than we ever have been. There is a chance for
the elective affinities. What tremendous forces they are, if two
subjects of them come within range! There lies a bit of iron. All the
dynamic agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in that
position, and there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown
rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,--it looks to you like just such a
bit of iron as the other,--and lo! it leaves them all,--the tugging of
the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the
snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a
sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,--it leaves
the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with each
other, all fighting for it, and springs straight to the magnet. What a
lucky thing it is for well-conducted persons that the maddening elective
affinities don't come into play in full force very often!
I suppose I am making a good deal more of our prospective visit than it
deserves.
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