nds' eyes when they meet you. They know it. They
have chuckled over it to a man. They whisper about it at the club, and
look over the paper at you. My next-door neighbor came to see me this
morning, and I saw by his face that he had the whole story pat. "Hem!"
says he, "well, I HAVE heard of it; and the fact is, they were
talking about you at dinner last night, and mentioning that the Times
had--ahem!--'walked into you.'"

"My good M----" I say--and M---- will corroborate, if need be, the
statement I make here--"here is the Times' article, dated January
4th, which states so and so, and here is a letter from the publisher,
likewise dated January 4th, and which says:--

"MY DEAR Sir,--Having this day sold the last copy of the first edition
(of x thousand) of the 'Kickleburys Abroad,' and having orders for more,
had we not better proceed to a second edition? and will you permit me to
enclose an order on," &c. &c.?

Singular coincidence! And if every author who was so abused by a critic
had a similar note from a publisher, good Lord! how easily would we take
the critic's censure!

"Yes, yes," you say; "it is all very well for a writer to affect to be
indifferent to a critique from the Times. You bear it as a boy bears a
flogging at school, without crying out; but don't swagger and brag as if
you liked it."

Let us have truth before all. I would rather have a good word than a bad
one from any person: but if a critic abuses me from a high place, and
it is worth my while, I will appeal. If I can show that the judge who
is delivering sentence against me, and laying down the law and making
a pretence of learning, has no learning and no law, and is neither
more nor less than a pompous noodle, who ought not to be heard in any
respectable court, I will do so; and then, dear friends, perhaps you
will have something to laugh at in this book.--

"THE KICKLEBURYS ABROAD.

"It has been customary, of late years, for the purveyors of amusing
literature--the popular authors of the day--to put forth certain
opuscules, denominated 'Christmas Books,' with the ostensible intention
of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions,
incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the new
year. We have said that their ostensible intention was such, because
there is another motive for these productions, locked up (as the popular
author deems) in his own breast, but which betrays itself, in the
quality of