told, arisen among readers who
from inveterate habit cannot bring the persons and events of a novel
into any relation with the actual conditions of life.

In the first place, then, I desire to say that Mrs. Erskine is not dead
of a broken heart. Erskine and I and our wives are very much in and out
at one another's houses; and I am therefore in a position to declare
that Mrs. Erskine, having escaped by her marriage from the vile caste
in which she was relatively poor and artificially unhappy and
ill-conditioned, is now, as the pretty wife of an art-critic, relatively
rich, as well as pleasant, active, and in sound health. Her chief
trouble, as far as I can judge, is the impossibility of shaking off her
distinguished relatives, who furtively quit their abject splendor to
drop in upon her for dinner and a little genuine human society much
oftener than is convenient to poor Erskine. She has taken a patronizing
fancy to her father, the Admiral, who accepts her condescension
gratefully as age brings more and more home to him the futility of his
social position. She has also, as might have been expected, become an
extreme advocate of socialism; and indeed, being in a great hurry for
the new order of things, looks on me as a lukewarm disciple because I do
not propose to interfere with the slowly grinding mill of Evolution, and
effect the change by one tremendous stroke from the united and awakened
people (for such she--vainly, alas!--believes the proletariat already to
be). As to my own marriage, some have asked sarcastically whether I ran
away again or not; others, whether it has been a success. These are
foolish questions. My marriage has turned out much as I expected
it would. I find that my wife's views on the subject vary with the
circumstances under which they are expressed.

I have now to make one or two comments on the impressions conveyed
by the style of your narrative. Sufficient prominence has not, in my
opinion, been given to the extraordinary destiny of my father, the
true hero of a nineteenth century romance. I, who have seen society
reluctantly accepting works of genius for nothing from men of
extraordinary gifts, and at the same time helplessly paying my
father millions, and submitting to monstrous mortgages of its future
production, for a few directions as to the most business-like way of
manufacturing and selling cotton, cannot but wonder, as I prepare my
income-tax returns, whether society was mad to sacrif