But in each and all of these protean shapes, he is equally fascinating and invincible. In “Beware of Dogs and Waltzing,” the author entered the confessional with even less precaution than usual. It is quite plain to one reading between the lines, that the hero, Mr. Lindsay Maud, with his _retroussé_ nose, sanguineous tint, curly hair, and dimpled chin, is no other than Willis himself; that the Surrey manor where the scene is laid is Shirley Park; that its hospitable occupants, the Becktons, are in truth the Skinner family; that Mabel Brown, the heroine, is identical with Miss Mary Stace; and, lastly, that Miss Blakeney, the dazzling but heartless heiress, whose hand Mr. Maud’s hostess kindly destines for her young _protégé_, but whom, yielding to his better angel, he flings overboard in favor of the gentler and sweeter Mabel, is a certain belle of fortune, who figures in Willis’s private correspondence as “trotted out” by Mrs. Skinner for his inspection with a view to his making a rich marriage. In “A Revelation of a Previous Life” and “The Phantom Head upon the Table,” the supernatural is introduced, but not with success. Willis had not the weird, haunting imagination of Hawthorne or Poe. He does not prepare the reader’s belief by creating the atmosphere of mystery required for illusion. In the midst of the fashionable, real life where they are set, his supernatural incidents lose their effect, and have no _vraisemblance_. Nor was he more at home in broad comedy. His humor--and he had humor--was delicate rather than robust; was made out of irony, pleasantry, and gay spirits, and depended more upon situation than character. If the situation was droll, the humor was good; otherwise not. “Miss Jones’s Son,” “The Spirit Love of Ione S----,” “Nora Mehidy,” “Meena Dimity,” and “Born to love Pigs and Chickens” were all _manqué_. The best of the humorous tales is “The Female Ward,” which tells of the embarrassments of a rather fast young gentleman in Boston, who receives an unexpected consignment, in the shape of a raw heiress, from a Southern plantation; her confiding parents intrusting her to his guardianship, with a request that he place her at school in some high-toned seminary. His difficulties in trying to perform this commission, ending with his lodging her temporarily in a private lunatic asylum, are very happily imagined. “The Female Ward” would lend itself nicely to the dramatizer, and make up into a most amusing little farce. “Those Ungrateful Blidginses” was funny, but wicked. It was Willis’s way of avenging himself upon two maiden ladies with whom he had fallen in, and subsequently fallen out, during his travels in Italy, and who, on returning to America, had circulated reports not to his credit. He had another hit at them in “Ernest Clay,” as “two abominable old maids by the name of Buggins or Blidgins, representing the _scan. mag._ of Florence.” The story caused a good deal of scandal. The