ustom, and I have never heard from her since.

My next venture was tale writing. Who has not tried this most
unsatisfactory method? It is a tremendously anxious time when your
first effort is sent out. What a lot of money you expect to obtain for
it! You do not intend to be unprepared, so you spend every penny in
your mind beforehand. Then there is the honor and glory of it! You
will hear everyone talking of the cleverly written tale and wondering
who is the gifted author!

What made me more hopeful was the possession of a cousin, who was very
successful in this line. Indeed, she has reached the three-volume
stage by now, and is beginning to be quite well known. I have lost my
interest in her, however, since she took me and my family off in one
of her books. It is such an easy thing to do. You only have to find
out a person's peculiarities--and everyone has a peculiarity!--and
overdraw them a little. My sisters and I, I remember, figured as
three brainless, fast girls, which would only have amused us had she
left the rest of the family alone. It is a foolish thing to do, for
besides nearly always giving offence it is not by any means an
evidence of good taste.

It is much more difficult to write a tale than some people think; you
get in such hopeless tangles sometimes. People you kill off in the
first chapter, you sadly need in the last. Then, when you are
finishing up, there are so many people to get rid of, that you are
obliged to dispatch them in a bunch with an explosion, or something
equally probable--three or four strangers as a rule, who have never
seen each other before, but who considerately assemble in one place to
meet their doom. Then the last pages will never fit in with the first.
Your meek but lovely heroine at the beginning has been transformed
into a beautiful vixen as you near the end, and is quite
unrecognizable. The worst parts of all are the sensational ones. You
think you have worked your hero up to a pitch of fiery eloquence,
while his _fiancee_ is dying in agony close by, and when you
complacently turn to read over the passage, you find his words imply
no more sorrow than they would at the death of a relative from whom he
had expectations, or--a mother-in-law!

It is rather a difficult matter in a large family to keep your actions
a secret. Obtuse as most men are, with things going on right under
their eyes, it is not easy to baffle them when once their curiosity is
roused. And yet curiosity