Mexico.

"DEAR SIR: Your favor of the 24th ult. duly
received and contents noted. I am much
gratified with your reference to my last
epistle, and your hearty encore, but I can give
no more musical monologues at present. I am
engaged as Corresponding Secretary in the
office of the Lone-Rock Mining Company.
Corresponding Secretary may be too grand a name
to give my humble position, but it comes nearer
to describing it than any that I can think of.

"First I came in just to help Jack out, while
his chief was away and the bookkeeper ill. I
helped him with the correspondence and all
sorts of odds and ends, and between times
practised typewriting, till now I can take
dictation on the machine when he speaks at a
moderately slow pace.

"Yesterday he received a telegram calling him
East to a special directors' meeting, to report
on something unexpected that has recently
developed out here. So I'm to stay on at the
office while he is gone, _on a salary_! A very
modest one it is to be sure, but it is bliss to
feel that at last I have found a paying
position, no matter how small it is. Isn't it
queer? Lone-Rock is the last place on the
planet where a girl like me would expect to
find anything of the sort to do. Mr. Headley,
the chief, is back, of course, or Jack couldn't
leave, and I'm watching my opportunity to make
myself so useful around the office that they'll
all wonder how they ever 'kept house' so long
without me.

"Mr. Bailey's pneumonia has been blessed to me
if not to him, for it has broken the spell, or
hoo-doo, or whatever it was that thwarted all
my efforts. Fortune's 'turn' is slowly
approaching. Let it come when it will I can now
meet it like the winged spur of my ancestors,
with the cry 'Ready! Aye, ready!'

"Trusting that this explanation is
satisfactory, and that we may be favored by a
reply at your earliest convenience, I have the
honor to remain,

"Yours very truly,
"M. WARE.

"(P.S. I must ask you to observe the very tasty
manner in which this is typed.)"

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