Although public notice has been given that anonymous correspondents will
only be answered on the _wrappers_ to the _parts_ of this work, and that
those who attach their real names will be noticed privately, yet it is
necessary to remark on one who is without a local habitation, and is out
of the reach of the two-penny and general post. This is the
communication alluded to:--
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book._
Sir,
I am the youngest of Three hundred and sixty-six brethren--there are no
fewer of us--who have the honour, in the words of the good old Song, to
call the Sun our Dad. You have done the rest of our family the favour of
bestowing an especial compliment upon each member of it individually--I
mean, as far as you have gone; for it will take you some time before you
can make your bow all round--and I have no reason to think that it is
your intention to neglect any of us but poor Me. Some you have hung
round with flowers; others you have made fine with martyrs’ palms and
saintly garlands. The most insignificant of us you have sent away
pleased with some fitting apologue, or pertinent story. What have I
done, that you dismiss me without mark or attribute? What though I make
my public appearance seldomer than the rest of my brethren? I thought
that angels’ visits had been accounted the more precious for their very
rarity. Reserve was always looked upon as dignified. I am seen but once,
for four times that my brethren obtrude themselves; making their
presence cheap and contemptible, in comparison with the state which I
keep.
Am I not a Day (when I do come) to all purposes as much as any of them?
Decompose me, anatomise me; you will find that I am constituted like the
rest. Divide me into twenty-four, and you shall find that I cut up into
as many goodly hours (or main limbs) as the rest. I too have my arteries
and pulses, which are the minutes and the seconds.
It is hard to be dis-familied thus, like Cinderella in her rags and
ashes, while her sisters flaunted it about in cherry-coloured ribbons
and favors. My brethren forsooth are to be dubbed; one, _Saint_ Day;
another, _Pope_ Day; a third, _Bishop_ Day; the least of them is
_Squire_ Day, or _Mr._ Day, while I am--plain Day. Our house, _Sir_, is
a very ancient one, and the least of us is too proud to put up with an
indignity. What though I am but a younger brother in some sense--for the
youngest of my brethren is by some thousand years my senior--yet I bid
fair to inherit as long as any of them, while I have the Calendar to
show; which, you must understand, is our Title Deeds.
Not content with slurring me over with a bare and naked acknowledgement
of my occasional visitation in prose, you have done your best to deprive
me of my verse-honours. In column 310 of your Book, you quote an antique
scroll, leaving out the last couplet, as if on purpose to affront me.
“Thirty days hath September”--so you transcribe very faithfully for four
lines, and most invidiously suppress the exceptive clause:--
Except in Leap Year, that’s the time
When February’s days hath twenty and--
I need not set down the rhyme which should follow; I dare say you know
it very well, though you were pleased to leave it out. These
indignities demand reparation. While you have time, it will be well for
you to make the _amende honorable_. Ransack your stores, learned Sir, I
pray of you, for some attribute, biographical, anecdotical, or floral,
to invest me with. Did nobody die, or nobody flourish--was nobody
born--upon any of my periodical visits to this globe? does the world
stand still as often as I vouchsafe to appear? Am I a blank in the
Almanac? alms for oblivion? If you do not find a flower at least to
grace me with (a Forget Me Not would cheer me in my present obscurity),
I shall prove the worst Day to you you ever saw in your life; and your
Work, instead of the Title it now vaunts, must be content (every fourth
year at least) to go by the lame appellation of
The Every-Day--but--one--Book.
Yours, as you treat me,