and the touching pleas of individuals of
both sexes, in reduced circumstances, were so many evidences of success,
which I hugged to my bosom. Reducing the matter to statistics, I have
since ascertained that about one in ten of these letters is dictated
either by honest sympathy, the warm, uncritical recognition of youth
(which I don't suppose any author would diminish, if he could), or the
craving for encouragement, under unpropitious circumstances of growth.
But how was I, in the beginning, to guess at the motives of the writers?
They offered sugar-plums, which I swallowed without a suspicion of the
drastic ingredients so many of them contained. Good Mrs. Sigourney kept
a journal of her experiences in this line. I wish I had done the same.

The young lady correspondent, I find, in most cases replies to your
reply, proposing a permanent correspondence. The young gentleman, who
desires, above all things, your "_candid opinion_ of the poems
enclosed,--be sure and point out the _faults_, and how they can be
_improved_"--is highly indignant when you take him at his word, and do
so. You receive a letter of defence and explanation, showing that what
you consider to be faults are not such. Moreover, his friends have
assured him that the poem which you advise him to omit is one of his
finest things! The distressed aspirant for literary fame, who only
requests that you shall read and correct his or her manuscript, procure
a publisher, and prefix a commendatory notice, signed with your name,
to the work, writes that he or she is at last undeceived in regard to
the character of authors. "I thank you, Mr. Green, for the _lesson_! The
remembrance of _your_ former struggles is _happily_ effaced in your
present success. It is hard for a heart throbbing with warmth to be
chilled, and a guileless confidence in human brotherhood to be crushed
forever! I will strive to bury my disappointed hopes in my own darkened
bosom; and that you may be saved from the experience which you have
prepared for another, is the wish of, _Sir_, yours, ----."

For a day or two I went about with a horrible feeling of dread and
remorse. I opened the morning paper with trembling hands, and only
breathed freely when I found no item headed "Suicide" in the columns. A
year afterwards, chance threw me in the way of my broken-hearted victim.
I declare to you I never saw a better specimen of gross animal health.
She--no, he (on second thoughts, I won't say which)--was