I was fond of that story. I experienced a certain delight in recalling the circumstances under which it was composed, and I felt in it that confidence which an author is sure to have in work which has sprung spontaneously, and as it were full-grown, from his brain. Every literary worker, down to the veriest penny-a-liner of them all, knows the difference between a tale which makes itself, so to speak, growing unforced into beauty and completeness like a crystal, and a laboriously constructed piece of work, be it contrived never so ingeniously and cleverly. The fiction I sent to the editor of the "Dark Red" was of the former variety. It had come into my head all of itself, as the children say, while I was travelling between New York and Boston, so complete and so distinct that I scarcely seemed to have more to do with its creation than the later putting upon paper. The circumstances were these:-- I had reached the Grand Central Station just in time to catch the morning train; and as the cars swept out into the daylight, I settled myself into a seat with a comfortable and something too self-satisfied feeling. In the first place, I was glad to be out of New York,--partly because it was hot and dusty there, partly because I am not over-fond of Gotham, and partly because sundry pleasant bachelor friends and divers good times were awaiting me at the Boston end of the journey. I looked out upon the sunny landscape, over which the splendors of an April day cast a glow of warmth and brightness, smiled at the remembrance of a retort I had made at the Century Club on the previous evening, which seemed to me rather neat, and then with a sort of mental nod of farewell to all the outside world I took up my book and prepared to follow the fortunes of the woful and wicked, but thoroughly charming French heroine with whose adventures I was at that particular time occupying myself. To my vexation, however, I discovered that instead of the second volume I had taken the first, and as I had no especial desire to peruse again the somewhat detailed account of the heroine's youth, her career at school, her first confession and early marriage,--all these being preliminary to the impropriety and the interest of the book, which, after the reprehensible manner of French novels, began together,--I laid down the volume with a sigh, and resigned myself to a ride of unalleviated dulness. A resource instantly presented itself, however, in the page which the lady in the seat before me was reading. As I glanced up I saw that she was entertaining herself with poetry, and the next moment a familiar line caught my eye:-- "If you were April's lady, and I were lord of May."