in memory of summer days when we wandered far and sat down to rest by springs and brooks in the doomed empire of Strong and talked of saving it and of better times and knew not they were impossible. Some of the people of these pages, when the author endeavored to regulate their conduct according to well-known rules of literary construction, declared themselves free and independent. When, urged by him, they tried to speak and act in the fashion of most novels, they laughed, and seemed to be ashamed of themselves, and with good reason.…
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