winter on Red Shirt; and I have to guard against
the night air a good deal myself.

It would ill become me, at this late date, to criticise Mr. Webster's
work, a work that is now, I may say, in nearly every home and
school-room in the land. It is a great book. I only hope that had Mr.
Webster lived he would have been equally fair in his criticism of my
books.

I hate to compare my books with Mr. Webster's, because it looks
egotistical in me; but, although Noah's book is larger than mine, and
has more literary attractions as a book to set a child on at the table,
it does not hold the interest of the reader all the way through.

He has introduced too many characters into his book at the expense of
the plot. It is a good book to pick up and while away a leisure hour,
perhaps, but it is not a work that could rivet your interest till
midnight, while the fire went out and the thermometer stepped down to
47 deg. below zero. You do not hurry through the pages to see whether
Reginald married the girl or not. Mr. Webster did not seem to care how
the affair turned out.

Therein consists the great difference between Noah and myself. He
doesn't keep up the interest. A friend of mine at Sing Sing, who secured
one of my books, said he never left his room till he had devoured it. He
said he seemed chained to the spot; and if you can't believe a convict
who is entirely out of politics, whom, in the name of George Washington,
can you trust?

[Illustration: NEVER LEFT HIS ROOM TILL HE HAD DEVOURED IT.]

Mr. Webster was certainly a most brilliant writer, though a little
inclined, perhaps, to be wordy. I have discovered in some of his later
books one hundred and eighteen thousand words no two of which are alike.
This shows great fluency and versatility, it is true, but we need
something else. The reader waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's
wonderful word-painting. There is not a thrill in the whole tome.

I had heard so much of Mr. Webster that when I read his book I confess I
was disappointed. It is cold, methodical, dry, and dispassionate in the
extreme, and one cannot help comparing it with the works of James
Fenimore Cooper and Horace.

As I said, however, it is a good book to pick up for the purpose of
whiling away an idle hour. No one should travel without Mr. Webster's
tale. Those who examine this tale will readily see why there were no
flies on the author. He kept them off with this tale.

It is a good book, as I