ready to pull me down and tear me. What a fierce enemy is that which bays
behind us in the voice of our proudest bygone achievement!

"But, as I said above, what could I do? I must write novels, and I must
have characters. 'Then why not invent them?' asks some novice. Oh, yes!
Invent them! You can invent a human being that in certain aspects of
humanity will answer every purpose for which your invention was intended.
A basket of straw, an old coat and pair of breeches, a hat which has been
soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken window, and had a brood of chickens
raised in it,--these elements, duly adjusted to each other, will
represent humanity so truthfully that the crows will avoid the cornfield
when your scarecrow displays his personality. Do you think you can make
your heroes and heroines,--nay, even your scrappy supernumeraries,--out
of refuse material, as you made your scarecrow? You can't do it. You
must study living people and reproduce them. And whom do you know so
well as your friends? You will show up your friends, then, one after
another. When your friends give out, who is left for you? Why, nobody
but your own family, of course. When you have used up your family, there
is nothing left for you but to write your autobiography.

"After my experience with my grand-aunt, I be came more cautious, very
naturally. I kept traits of character, but I mixed ages as well as
sexes. In this way I continued to use up a large amount of material,
which looked as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to meddle with. Who
would have expected to meet my maternal uncle in the guise of a
schoolboy? Yet I managed to decant his characteristics as nicely as the
old gentleman would have decanted a bottle of Juno Madeira through that
long siphon which he always used when the most sacred vintages were
summoned from their crypts to render an account of themselves on his
hospitable board. It was a nice business, I confess, but I did it, and I
drink cheerfully to that good uncle's memory in a glass of wine from his
own cellar, which, with many other more important tokens of his good
will, I call my own since his lamented demise.

"I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a course of
cousins. I had enough of them to furnish out a whole gallery of
portraits. There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her; Lucretia, more
correctly. She was a cripple. Her left lower limb had had something
happen to it, and she walked with a crut