Butterfly-brother, the hail will be upon you." I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels taken alone serve one much as sweetmeats _ad libitum_ do children, nor that she had to prove that life has in it that spiritual quinine, precious because bitter, whose part it is to wake the higher hunger.
Tom talked of himself as on the staff of "The Firefly"-- such was the name of the newspaper whose editor sometimes paid him--a weekly of great pretense, which took upon itself the mystery of things, as if it were God's spy.

It was popular in a way, chiefly in fashionable circles.

As regarded the opinions it promulgated, I never heard one, who understood the particular question at any time handled, say it was correct.

Its writers were mostly young men, and their passion was to say clever things.

If a friend's book came in their way, it was treated worse or better than that of a stranger, but with impartial disregard for truth in either case; yet many were the authors who would go up endless back stairs to secure from that paper a flattering criticism, and then be as proud of it as if it had been the genuine and unsought utterance of a true man's conviction; and many were the men, immeasurably the superiors of the reviewers, and in a general way acquainted with their character, who would accept as conclusive upon the merits of a book the opinions they gave, nor ever question a mode of quotation by which a book was made to show itself whatever the reviewer chose to call it.