d, she said to
herself,--had felt their mouths and tried their paces. This expression,
as she used it in her thoughts, seems rather foreign to her habits, but
there was room in her large brain for a wide range of illustrations and
an ample vocabulary. She could not do much with her own muscles, but she
had known the passionate delight of being whirled furiously over the road
behind four scampering horses, in a rocking stage-coach, and thought of
herself in the Secretary's chair as not unlike the driver on his box. A
few weeks of rest had allowed her nervous energy to store itself up, and
the same powers which had distanced competition in the classes of her
school had of necessity to expend themselves in vigorous action in her
new office.

Her appeals had their effect. A number of papers were very soon sent in;
some with names, some anonymously. She looked these papers over, and
marked those which she thought would be worth reading and listening to at
the meetings. One of them has just been presented to the reader. As to
the authorship of the following one there were many conjectures. A
well-known writer, who had spent some weeks at Arrowhead Village, was
generally suspected of being its author. Some, however, questioned
whether it was not the work of a new hand, who wrote, not from
experience, but from his or her ideas of the condition to which a
story-teller, a novelist, must in all probability be sooner or later
reduced. The reader must judge for himself whether this first paper is
the work of an old hand or a novice.

SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NOVELIST.

"I have written a frightful number of stories, forty or more, I think.
Let me see. For twelve years two novels a year regularly: that makes
twenty-four. In three different years I have written three
stories annually: that makes thirty-three. In five years one a
year,--thirty-eight. That is all, is n't it? Yes. Thirty-eight, not
forty. I wish I could make them all into one composite story, as Mr.
Galton does his faces.

"Hero--heroine--mamma--papa--uncle--sister, and so on. Love
--obstacles--misery--tears--despair--glimmer of hope--unexpected solution
of difficulties--happy finale.

"Landscape for background according to season. Plants of each month got
up from botanical calendars.

"I should like much to see the composite novel. Why not apply Mr.
Galton's process, and get thirty-eight stories all in one? All the
Yankees would resolve into one Yankee, all