end of his singularly unproductive and unprofitable labours, without,
perhaps, having yet come to the beginning. The reader may have once
hoped, perhaps, that the story would be like the universe; which when
it ends, will explain why it ever began. But the reader has long been
sleeping, after the toils and trials of his part in the affair; and the
writer is too tactful to ask at how early a stage of his story-telling
that generally satisfactory solution of all our troubles was found.
He knows not if the sleep has been undisturbed, or in that sleep what
dreams may come, if there has been cast upon it any shadow of the
shapes in his own very private and comfortable nightmare; turrets clad
with the wings of morning or temples marching over dim meadows as
living monsters, or swine plumed like cherubim or forests bent like
bows, or a fiery river winding through a dark land. Images are in
their nature indefensible, if they miss the imagination of another;
and the foolish scribe of the Long Bow will not commit the last folly
of defending his dreams. He at least has drawn a bow at a venture and
shot an arrow into the air; and he has no intention of looking for it
in oaks, all over the neighbourhood, or expecting to find it still
sticking in a mortal and murderous manner in the heart of a friend.
His is only a toy bow; and when a boy shoots with such a bow, it is
generally very difficult to find the arrow--or the boy.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.