ll often pick out your weak points with a malignant sagacity, as a
pettifogging lawyer will frequently find a real flaw in trying to get at
everything he can quibble about. But is there nobody who will praise you
generously when you do well,--nobody that will lend you a hand now while
you want it,--or must they all wait until you have made yourself a name
among strangers, and then all at once find out that you have something in
you? Oh,--said the girl, and the bright film gathered too fast for her
young eyes to hold much longer,--I ought not to be ungrateful! I have
found the kindest friend in the world. Have you ever heard the Lady--the
one that I sit next to at the table--say anything about me?

I have not really made her acquaintance, I said. She seems to me a
little distant in her manners and I have respected her pretty evident
liking for keeping mostly to herself.

--Oh, but when you once do know her! I don't believe I could write
stories all the time as I do, if she didn't ask me up to her chamber, and
let me read them to her. Do you know, I can make her laugh and cry,
reading my poor stories? And sometimes, when I feel as if I had written
out all there is in me, and want to lie down and go to sleep and never
wake up except in a world where there are no weekly papers,--when
everything goes wrong, like a car off the track,--she takes hold and sets
me on the rails again all right.

--How does she go to work to help you?

--Why, she listens to my stories, to begin with, as if she really liked
to hear them. And then you know I am dreadfully troubled now and then
with some of my characters, and can't think how to get rid of them. And
she'll say, perhaps, Don't shoot your villain this time, you've shot
three or four already in the last six weeks; let his mare stumble and
throw him and break his neck. Or she'll give me a hint about some new
way for my lover to make a declaration. She must have had a good many
offers, it's my belief, for she has told me a dozen different ways for me
to use in my stories. And whenever I read a story to her, she always
laughs and cries in the right places; and that's such a comfort, for
there are some people that think everything pitiable is so funny, and
will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkle--you've seen Mr.
Jefferson, haven't you?--is breaking your heart for you if you have one.
Sometimes she takes a poem I have written and reads it to me so
beautifully, that I f