"What does that mean?" said Gates; "_his_ sister? why don't he want her to write? I have cut out every article of hers as fast as they appeared; confounded good they are, too, and I call myself a judge; they are better, at any rate, than half our paper is filled with. This is all very odd--it stimulates my curiosity amazingly--_his_ sister? married or unmarried, maid, wife, or widow? She can't be poor when he's so well off; (gave $100 for a vase which struck his fancy yesterday, at Martini's.) I don't understand it. 'Annoy and mortify him exceedingly;' what _can_ he mean? I must get at the bottom of that; she is becoming very popular, at any rate; her pieces are traveling all over the country--and here is one, to my mind, as good as anything _he_ ever wrote. Ha! ha! perhaps that's the very idea now--perhaps he wants to be the only genius in the family. Let him! if he can; if she don't win an enviable name, and in a very short time too, I shall be mistaken. I wish I knew something about her. Hyacinth is a heartless dog--pays me principally in fine speeches; and because I am not in a position just now to speak my mind about it. I suppose he takes me for the pliant tool I appear. By Jupiter! it makes my blood boil; but let me get another and better offer, Mr. Ellet, and see how long I will write articles for you to father, in this confounded hot garret. '_His_ sister!' I will inquire into that. I'll bet a box of cigars she writes for daily bread--Heaven help her, if she does, poor thing!--it's hard enough, as I know, for a _man_ to be jostled and snubbed round in printing-offices. Well, well, it's no use wondering, I must go to work; what a pile of books here is to be reviewed! wonder who reads all the books? Here is Uncle Sam's Log House. Mr. Ellet writes me that I must simply announce the book without comment, for fear of offending southern subscribers. The word 'slave' I know has been tabooed in our columns this long while, for the same reason. Here are poems by Lina Lintney--weak as diluted water, but the authoress once paid Mr. Ellet a compliment in a newspaper article, and here is her 'reward of merit,' (in a memorandum attached to the book, and just sent down by Mr. Ellet;) 'give this volume a first-rate notice.' Bah! what's the use of criticism when a man's opinion can be bought and sold that way? it is an imposition on the public. There is 'The Barolds' too; I am to 'give that a capital notice,' because the authoress introduced Mr. Ellet into fashionable society when a young man. The grammar in that book would give Lindley Murray convulsions, and the construction of the sentences drive Blair to a mad-house. Well, a great deal the dear public know what a book is, by the reviews of it in this paper. Heaven forgive me the lies I tell this way on compulsion.