Dear madam, you see how it would happen if I went there. He would ask me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him, and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done. I wish I could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them, it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence. But they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them, no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. If you will send yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it, I can assure you of that. A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply sitting by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. I notice that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by. Well, the thing began in this way. A member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown. I have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves. I don't know why, but they do. So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued: _Central Office. (Gruffly.)_ Hello! I. Is it the Central Office? C. O. Of course it is. What do you want? I. Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please? C. O. All right. Just keep your ear to the telephone. Then I heard _k-look, k-look, k'look--klook-klook-klook-look-look!_ then a horrible “gritting” of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: Y-e-s? (_Rising inflection._) Did you wish to speak to me? Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world--a conversation with only one end to it. You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. Well, I heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted--for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone: Yes? Why, how did _that _happen? Pause. What did you say? Pause. Oh no, I don't think it was. Pause. _ No_! Oh no, I didn't mean _that_. I meant, put it in while it is still boiling--or just before it _comes _to a boil. Pause. _What_? Pause.