You cannot for a moment imagine--however, you despise imagination and I withdraw the offensive word--you cannot for a moment suppose that I can have any motive in being discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go on to say, but only with your permission, that the first time I attempted to sketch you, was in a very early piece of work; I was a youthful novelist, at the outset of my career. I projected a story entitled: "_The Married Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens._" I feel bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly remind me of the _Sal Blivvens_ of my story. In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was this: as twenty-one human shillings he never made an exact human guinea--his shillings ran a few pence over, or they fell a few pence short. That is, Ned never did just enough of anything, or said just enough, but either too much or too little to suit _Sal_. He never had just one idea about any one thing, but two or three ideas; he never felt in just one way about any one thing, but had mixed feelings, a variety of feelings. He was not a yard measure or a pint measure or a pound measure; he overflowed or he didn't fill, and any one thing in him always ran into other things in him. Being a young novelist I was not satisfied to offer _Sal_ to the world on her own account, but I must try to make her more credible and formidable by following her into the next generation, and giving her a son who inherited her traits. Thus I had _Tommy Blivvens_. When Tommy was old enough to receive his first allowance of Christmas pudding, he proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He picked out all the raisins and made a little pile of them. And made a little separate pile of the currants, and another pile of the almonds, and another of the citron, or of whatever else there was to separate. Then in profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, as a philosopher of the sure. Thus--and I insist I mean no disrespect--your letter does revive for me a little innocent laughter at my early literary vision of a human baggage--friend of my youthful days and artistic enthusiasm--_Sal Blivvens_. I arranged that when _Ned_ died, his neighbours all felt sorry and wished him a green turf for his grave. _Sal_, I felt sure, survived him as one who all her life walks past every human heart and enters none--being always dead-sure, always dead-right; for the human heart rejects perfection in any human being.