rect judgment on other matters, is almost a direct transcript
from nature. I should not have ventured to repeat the questions of
the daughters of the millionaires to Myrtle Hazard about her family
conditions, and their comments, had not a lady of fortune and position
mentioned to me a similar circumstance in the school history of one of
her own children. Perhaps I should have hesitated in reproducing Myrtle
Hazard's "Vision," but for a singular experience of his own related to
me by the late Mr. Forceythe Willson.

Gifted Hopkins (under various alliasis) has been a frequent
correspondent of mine. I have also received a good many communications,
signed with various names, which must have been from near female
relatives of that young gentleman. I once sent a kind of encyclical
letter to the whole family connection; but as the delusion under which
they labor is still common, and often leads to the wasting of time,
the contempt of honest study or humble labor, and the misapplication of
intelligence not so far below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording
a respectable return when employed in the proper direction, I thought
this picture from life might also be of service. When I say that no
genuine young poet will apply it to himself, I think I have so far
removed the sting that few or none will complain of being wounded.

It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy
Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a
regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present
time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me and mine
and the bulk of their fellow-creatures after the manner of their sect.
If, in the interval between his first showing himself in my story and
its publication in a separate volume, anything had occurred to make
me question the justice or expediency of drawing and exhibiting such a
portrait, I should have reconsidered it, with the view of retouching its
sharper features. But its essential truthfulness has been illustrated
every month or two, since my story has been in the course of
publication, by a fresh example from real life, stamped in darker colors
than any with which I should have thought of staining my pages.

There are a great many good clergymen to one bad one, but a writer
finds it hard to keep to the true proportion of good and bad persons in
telling a story. The three or four good ministers I have introduced in
this nar