had written a prose story by request,
when it was found that I had grown utterly inane over verse. It was
written in the first person, and the style was modelled after De Foe's.
The night before sending it off, when I had already packed it up, I was
reading about the professional story-tellers of Eastern countries, who
devoted their lives to the telling of tales. I unfastened the manuscript
and retained it, convinced that I should do better by telling the story.'

'Well thought of!' exclaimed Christopher, looking into her face. 'There
is a way for everybody to live, if they can only find it out.'

'It occurred to me,' she continued, blushing slightly, 'that tales of the
weird kind were made to be told, not written. The action of a teller is
wanted to give due effect to all stories of incident; and I hope that a
time will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of fiction
at home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at the feet
of a professed romancer. I am going to tell my tales before a London
public. As a child, I had a considerable power in arresting the
attention of other children by recounting adventures which had never
happened; and men and women are but children enlarged a little. Look at
this.'

She drew from her pocket a folded paper, shook it abroad, and disclosed a
rough draft of an announcement to the effect that Mrs. Petherwin,
Professed Story-teller, would devote an evening to that ancient form of
the romancer's art, at a well-known fashionable hall in London. 'Now you
see,' she continued, 'the meaning of what you observed going on here.
That you heard was one of three tales I am preparing, with a view of
selecting the best. As a reserved one, I have the tale of my own life--to
be played as a last card. It was a private rehearsal before my brothers
and sisters--not with any view of obtaining their criticism, but that I
might become accustomed to my own voice in the presence of listeners.'

'If I only had had half your enterprise, what I might have done in the
world!'

'Now did you ever consider what a power De Foe's manner would have if
practised by word of mouth? Indeed, it is a style which suits itself
infinitely better to telling than to writing, abounding as it does in
colloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper in these days, but
have a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real. And so, in
short, I am going to talk De Foe on a subject of my