Bow-wow, Cerberus! Here shall be no sop for
thee, unless--unless Cerberus is an uncommonly good dog, when we shall
bear no malice because he flew at us from our neighbor's gate.
What, then, is the main grief you spoke of as annoying you--the
toothache in the Lord Mayor's jaw, the thorn in the cushion of the
editorial chair? It is there. Ah! it stings me now as I write. It comes
with almost every morning's post. At night I come home and take my
letters up to bed (not daring to open them), and in the morning I find
one, two, three thorns on my pillow. Three I extracted yesterday; two I
found this morning. They don't sting quite so sharply as they did; but a
skin is a skin, and they bite, after all, most wickedly. It is all very
fine to advertise on the Magazine, "Contributions are only to be sent
to Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., and not to the Editor's private
residence." My dear sir, how little you know man- or woman-kind, if you
fancy they will take that sort of warning! How am I to know, (though, to
be sure, I begin to know now,) as I take the letters off the tray, which
of those envelopes contains a real bona fide letter, and which a thorn?
One of the best invitations this year I mistook for a thorn-letter, and
kept it without opening.
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