To the Same.

Dec. 18, 1874.

I am sorry to be unable to deceive your young friend this evening, but shall be consoled, if he will at some other time submit to my impostures.

It is difficult, without experience, to appreciate the satisfaction of the juggler, — a small divinity in his way. There is no love of power more natural or instinctive than that which we instinctively refer to the divus; namely, the desire to excite fear and wonder. And so I am sorry again that I have not discovered or invented, either in magic or science, any new miracles for Christmas, to serve for interlude or afterpiece to the play; but I shall have the nobler satisfaction of sympathy with the children’s performances,—in imitation of a later and finer, or more humane, attribute of the divus, or more truly of the diva, — whose I am very truly.