“Oblige a lady.” She is not the first, or the only lady, who has tried to be “obliged,” and _obliging_, in this way. Dear creatures! how they love me! There was Miss Moses, _proper_ Miss Moses, who had been for a year or more writing for the _Scribetown Gazette_, when I commenced. How delighted she was at my advent--how pleased she was with my articles--how many things she said about me, personally and literarily, to the editor of the _Gazette_--what an interest she took in my progress. _She_ never tried to keep my articles out of the paper, (benevolent soul!) “lest they should injure its reputation”--not she; she never, when looking over the exchanges, hid away those in which my articles were copied, and commended--not she, she never, when she found one containing a personal attack on me (written at her own suggestion), marked it with a double row of ink marks, and laid it in a conspicuous place on the editor’s table--not she. She _liked_ my articles--liked them so well, that, on several occasions, she appropriated whole sentences and paragraphs; omitting (probably through forgetfulness), to make the necessary quotation marks! Dove-like Miss Moses! I think I see her now looking as though she was going to be translated (which by the way, her works never have been.) Pious Miss Moses, who rang threadbare changes on the ten commandments, and was addicted to meetings and melancholy; she tried hard to extinguish me, but success makes one magnanimous. I forgive her. And there was Miss Fox, who “never could see any thing to like in Fanny Fern’s articles,” who knew her to have come from a family, “who _always_ fizzled out”--(on this point this deponent saith nothing)--but who, when she (Miss Fox) had occasion to write a newspaper story, got some kind friend to say in print, “that the story by Rosa, was probably written by Fanny Fern.” Sweet Miss Fox! Then there was Miss Briar, who “wondered if Mr. Bonner, of the New York _Ledger_, gave Fanny Fern, _who had never been out of sight of America_, $100 a column for her stupid trash, what he would give _her_, Miss Briar, who had crossed the big pond, when _she_ touched pen to paper! Fanny Fern, indeed! Humph!” Lovely creatures! I adore the whole sex. I always prefer hotels, ferry boats, and omnibusses, where they predominate, and abound; how courteous they are to each other, in case of a squeeze! Lord bless ’em! How truly Burns says: “Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O: Her ’prentice han’ she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O. _The sweetest hours that e’er I spend Are spent amang the lasses, O._” LOOK ALOFT.