Then a question occurred: how should we divide the honors, supposing such an article should really find its way into print? Would there not be material for a standard quarrel in the fact that neither could claim sole proprietorship? What would be John's sensation, should any one say to him: 'Mr. ----, I have just been reading your wife's last article; capital thing!' and, _vice versa_, imagine the same thing said of me. Could I preserve amiability under such circumstances, and would not the result be, a divorce in a year, and a furious lawsuit as to the ownership of the copyright? John certainly is magnanimous, I thought, but no one cares for divided honors, and there is that middle-aged relation of his, with a figure like a vinegar cruet, and a voice as acid as its contents, who never comes here for a day without doing her best to set us by the ears, and who, in the beginning of our married life, when we did not understand each other quite so well as now, sometimes succeeded, to her intense satisfaction. How she would go about among all the friends and relations, pulling the poor articles to pieces, giving all the fine bits to John and the rubbish to me, and hinting generally that my pretensions to authorship were all very well, but that every one knew John did the work and I looked out for the credit. Here I paused. I had been successfully engaged in the pursuit of trouble, and had conjured up so irritating a picture, that actually a small tear had left its source, and was running over the bridge of my nose! 'John,' I said, 'notwithstanding that I never did know how to begin anything in an effective way, I am still determined to write, and you must help me.' Then I opened my heart to him, and told him my plan, and the imagined tribulation it had given me in the last ten minutes.