“My object in troubling you is to announce the fact, agreeable enough to myself, that I have just completed a novel in three volumes, and to suggest to you that it should make its first appearance to the world in the pages of the magazine under your control. I will frankly tell you that I am not myself fond of this mode of publication; but Messrs. X., Y., Z., of Paternoster Row, with whom you are doubtless acquainted, have assured me that such will be the better course. In these matters one is still terribly subject to the tyranny of the publishers, who surely of all cormorants are the most greedy, and of all tyrants are the most arrogant. Though I have never seen you, I know you too well to suspect for a moment that my words will ever be repeated to my respectable friends in the Row. “Shall I wait upon you with my MS.,--or will you call for it? Or perhaps it may be better that I should send it to you. Young ladies should not run about,--even after editors; and it might be so probable that I should not find you at home. Messrs. X., Y., and Z. have read the MS.,--or more probably the young man whom they keep for the purpose has done so,--and the nod of approval has been vouchsafed. Perhaps this may suffice; but if a second examination be needful, the work is at your service. “Yours faithfully, and in hopes of friendly relations, “JOSEPHINE DE MONTMORENCI. “I am English, though my unfortunate name will sound French in your ears.” For facility in the telling of our story we will call this especial editor Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown’s first feeling on reading the letter was decidedly averse to the writer. But such is always the feeling of editors to would-be contributors, though contributions are the very food on which an editor must live. But Mr. Brown was an unmarried man, who loved the rustle of feminine apparel, who delighted in the brightness of a woman’s eye when it would be bright for him, and was not indifferent to the touch of a woman’s hand. As editors go, or went then, he knew his business, and was not wont to deluge his pages with weak feminine ware in return for smiles and flattering speeches,--as editors have done before now; but still he liked an adventure, and was perhaps afflicted by some slight flaw of judgment, in consequence of which the words of pretty women found with him something of preponderating favour. Who is there that will think evil of him because it was so? He read the letter a second time, and did not send that curt, heart-rending answer which is so common to editors,--“The editor’s compliments and thanks, but his stock of novels is at present so great that he cannot hope to find room for the work which has been so kindly suggested.”