Perhaps it may be as well to silence all conjecture at once, by stating that I am a woman of----no, I won't say how old, because everybody will date me from this time forward, and I shall not always be willing to tell how old I am! I am not very young now, it is true; I am more than sixteen and less than forty; so when our clergyman requested all between those ages to remain after service for the purpose of forming a week-day Bible-class, I sat still, and so did everybody else except Mrs. Van Doren, whose great-grandchild was christened in the morning;--our church is a new one. However, this is digressing. I am not very tall, nor very short; I am rather odd-looking, but decidedly plain. I have brown hair and eyes, a pale light complexion, a commonplace figure, pretty good taste in dress, and a quick sense of the ludicrous, that makes me laugh a great deal, and have a good time generally. I live at home, in the town of Blank, in a quiet by-street. My parents are both living, and we keep one Irish girl. I go to church on Sundays, and follow my trade week-days. I write everything I do write in my own room, which is not so pleasant as a bower of roses in some respects, but is preferable in regard to earwigs and caterpillars, which are troublesome in bowers. I have a small pine table to write on, as much elderly furniture as supplies me places for sleep and my books, a small stove in winter, (which is another advantage over bowers,) and my "flowing draperies" are blue chintz, which I bought at a bargain; some quaint old engravings of Bartolozzi's in black and gilt frames; a few books, among which are prominently set forth a volume of "The Doctor,"--Nicolo de' Lapi, in delightful bindings of white parchment,--Thomas a Kempis,--a Bible, of English type and paper,--and Emerson's Poems, bound in Russia leather. Not that I have no other books,--grammars, and novels, and cook-books, in gorgeous array,--but these are within reach from my pillow, when I want to read myself asleep; and a plaster cast of Minerva's owl mounts guard above them, curious fowl that it is. The neighbors think I am a pretty nice girl, and my papa secretly exults over me as a genius, but he don't say much about it. And there, dear public, you have Matilda Muffin as she is, which I hope will quash the romances, amusing though they be. But when, after much editorial correspondence, and persevering whispers of kind friends who had been told the facts in confidence, A. B. became only the pretext of a mystery, and I signed myself by my full name, the question naturally arose,--"Who _is_ Matilda Muffin?"