aits I had made use of in
the story that Elisha found fault with.

"So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for
yourself I had no choice. There was one great advantage in dealing with
them,--I knew them so thoroughly. One naturally feels a certain delicacy
it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who have been so
near to him. One's mother, for instance: suppose some of her little ways
were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of them would furnish
amusement to great numbers of readers; it would not be without hesitation
that a writer of delicate sensibility would draw her portrait, with all
its whimsicalities, so plainly that it should be generally recognized.
One's father is commonly of tougher fibre than one's mother, and one
would not feel the same scruples, perhaps, in using him professionally as
material in a novel; still, while you are employing him as bait,--you see
I am honest and plain-spoken, for your characters are baits to catch
readers with,--I would follow kind Izaak Walton's humane counsel about
the frog you are fastening to your fish-hook: fix him artistically, as he
directs, but in so doing I use him as though you loved him.'

"I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen who
have anything effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all my
friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives. It has
occurred to me that I might open a new field in the family connection of
my father-in-law and mother-in-law. We have been thinking of paying them
a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of studying them and
their relatives and visitors. I have long wanted a good chance for
getting acquainted with the social sphere several grades below that to
which I am accustomed, and I have no doubt that I shall find matter for
half a dozen new stories among those connections of mine. Besides, they
live in a Western city, and one doesn't mind much how he cuts up the
people of places he does n't himself live in. I suppose there is not
really so much difference in people's feelings, whether they live in
Bangor or Omaha, but one's nerves can't be expected to stretch across the
continent. It is all a matter of greater or less distance. I read this
morning that a Chinese fleet was sunk, but I did n't think half so much
about it as I did about losing my sleeve button, confound it! People
have accused me of want of feeling; they misunderstand the