In this way, I use the small talk of the writers as a soft food for my readers. Just as you attempt, in your feeble way, to serve up the gossip of your little hamlet in your weekly paper, so I do; for I tell you in confidence what women want is not literature, not art, not science, but gossip. So I make all the great writers of the day write gossip for them. This is the secret of my success. You should feel very happy now, for, although my thoughts and pen fly with lightninglike rapidity, I have spent five hundred dollars’ worth of time in answering your inquiry. I will answer the rest of my anxious readers as soon as I can systematize other incidents in my very short but successward career. In the meantime, young men by following the lines laid down in this paper cannot fail of success, real, pure, noble success. J. HOWE ADAMS. PLOTS AND THINGS. UNFORBIDDEN FRUIT. I have a plot:—A man and a girl in a boarding house in Duesseldorf were rather sweet on each other. It might have become love and a marriage, since they were the only Americans there, were both to stay all summer, and both attractive. The romance began well, they even got so far that one day he held her hand and leaned forward, gazing deeply into her eyes. Just then the Frau Professorin who kept the _pension_ stepped suddenly into the parlor, saw them, and retreated precipitately. Here was a catastrophe. Her reputation according to German ideas, gone. “Ein junges Maedchen sich se zu eenehmen—abschenlich!” Nothing but an engagement could excuse the holding of the hand of a junges Maedchen by a man. They looked at each other and laughed, ruefully. Then they agreed to become engaged, temporarily: what in Virginia is known as “just engaged,” in contradistinction to “engaged to be married.” For a time it was good fun. He was more devoted than ever; and they even thought of making it permanent. But you know how people act in Germany. Every time he came into the parlor, whoever was sitting beside her, jumped up, and he had to go over and sit beside her. Then he had to make pretty speeches to her while all the other boarders, with German tact, stopped talking and listened. The man and the girl carried out their roles well, though they drew the line at having their picture taken with their arms around each other. This was a great disappointment to the other boarders. Neither the man nor the girl was able to talk to any one in the house except about the girl and the man. It got to be boresome after a while. When at last they left Duesseldorf, the joy with which they flew asunder was something to see. There my plot and the romance end. Of course there were to be chaperones and scenery. WHICH SINNED? I was confessor; my cousin or Miss Hart was sinner (each has confessed on the other); the story is about this:—