he maintained, to his and all
his relatives' great damage, wrong, loss, grief, shame, and irreparable
injury, for which the sum of blank thousand dollars would be a modest
compensation. The story made the book sell, but not enough to pay blank
thousand dollars. In the mean time a cousin of mine had sniffed out the
resemblance between the character in my book and our great-aunt. We were
rivals in her good graces. 'Cousin Pansie' spoke to her of my book and
the trouble it was bringing on me,--she was so sorry about it! She liked
my story,--only those personalities, you know. 'What personalities?'
says old granny-aunt. 'Why, auntie, dear, they do say that he has
brought in everybody we know,--did n't anybody tell you about--well,--I
suppose you ought to know it,--did n't anybody tell you you were made fun
of in that novel?' Somebody--no matter who--happened to hear all this,
and told me. She said granny-aunt's withered old face had two red spots
come to it, as if she had been painting her cheeks from a pink saucer.
No, she said, not a pink saucer, but as if they were two coals of fire.
She sent out and got the book, and made her (the somebody that I was
speaking of) read it to her. When she had heard as much as she could
stand,--for 'Cousin Pansie' explained passages to her,--explained, you
know,--she sent for her lawyer, and that same somebody had to be a
witness to a new will she had drawn up. It was not to my advantage.
'Cousin Pansie' got the corner lot where the grocery is, and pretty much
everything else. The old woman left me a legacy. What do you think it
was? An old set of my own books, that looked as if it had been bought
out of a bankrupt circulating library.

"After that I grew more careful. I studied my disguises much more
diligently. But after all, what could I do? Here I was, writing stories
for my living and my reputation. I made a pretty sum enough, and worked
hard enough to earn it. No tale, no money. Then every story that went
from my workshop had to come up to the standard of my reputation, and
there was a set of critics,--there is a set of critics now and
everywhere,--that watch as narrowly for the decline of a man's reputation
as ever a village half drowned out by an inundation watched for the
falling of the waters. The fame I had won, such as it was, seemed to
attend me,--not going before me in the shape of a woman with a trumpet,
but rather following me like one of Actaeon's hounds, his throat open,