nths'
comparison he wrote to a publisher explaining that he had the manuscript
of a great novel that would be parted with for a consideration. He assured
the publisher that the novel was as excellent as any Miss Burney, Miss
Edgeworth, or any one else ever wrote.

Now publishers get letters like that by every mail, and when Mr. Austen
received his reply it was so antarctic in sentiment that the manuscript
was stored away in the garret, where it lay for just eleven years before
it found a publisher. But in the meantime Miss Austen had written three
other novels--not with much hope that any one would publish them, but to
please her father and the few intimate friends who read and sighed and
smiled in quiet.

The year she was thirty years of age her father died--died with no thought
that the world would yet endorse his own loving estimate of his daughter's
worth.

After the father's death financial troubles came, and something had to be
done to fight off possible hungry wolves. The manuscript was hunted out,
dusted, gone over, and submitted to publishers. They sniffed at it and
sent it back. Finally a man was found who was bold enough to read. He
liked it, but wouldn't admit the fact. Yet he decided to print it. He did
so. The reading world liked it and said so, although not very loudly.
Slowly the work made head, and small-sized London drafts were occasionally
sent by publishers to Miss Austen with apologies because the amounts were
not larger.

Now, in reference to writing books it may not be amiss to explain that no
one ever said, "Now then, I'll write a story!" and sitting down at table
took up pen and dipping it in ink, wrote. Stories don't come that way.
Stories take possession of one--incident after incident--and you write in
order to get rid of 'em--with a few other reasons mixed in, for motives,
like silver, are always found mixed. Children play at keeping house: and
men and women who have loved think of the things that have happened, then
imagine all the things that might have happened, and from thinking it all
over to writing it out is but a step. You begin one chapter and write it
this forenoon; and do all you may to banish the plot, the next chapter is
all in your head before sundown. Next morning you write chapter number
two, to unload it, and so the story spins itself out into a book. All this
if you live in the country and have time to think and are not broken in
upon by too much work and worry--save th