forgotten what it was about, but she had “cried and cried and cried.” Occasionally writers have assured me that it bored them to receive enthusiastic letters about their books, and I have at once, mentally, replied “You’re a liar.” No writer is ever anything but pleased to learn that some one has found something, anything, of interest or value in one of his efforts. One may write primarily for money, to make a living, but no matter to what trashy and flashy depths a writer may descend, there is always in his books something of himself. However hard he might try, he could not keep it out, and it immensely pleases him to have it discovered and commented upon, either in a letter from an unknown reader or in a five minutes’ conversation. To me few incidents are as agreeable, as altogether gratifying and satisfactory, as is the incident of opening an envelope addressed in an unknown handwriting and finding inside a letter that begins, “I have never written to an author before, but I feel that I must write to tell you that,” etc., etc. And any one who has written a book and declares that letters like this do not please him, is simply a _poseur_ or untruthful, or both. In the case of the great and famous it no doubt now and then ceases to be a pleasure. A daughter of Longfellow told me that her father had once received an imperative note from some woman, worded about as follows: “Dear Sir: I have issued invitations for a ladies’ luncheon a week from next Wednesday. There will be about fifty present and I wish to present each of them with your autograph as a souvenir. Kindly send me at once fifty autographs to the address given below.” Longfellow was the kindest and most courteous of men, but this was a little more than even he could “stand for,” as we would express it to-day. The luncheon was unautographic.