And 1121--what was this? The initial lines ran: "'Oh, damn everything!' exclaimed Percival Holcombe, as he dropped languidly into a deep-seated leather chair by the club window which commanded a view of the noisy street crowded with fashion and frivolity, wherein the afternoon's sun, freed from its enthralling mists, which all day long had jealously obscured his beams, was gloating o'er the panels of the carriages of noblemen who were returning from race-track and park, and the towhead of the little sweeper who plied his humble trade which earned his scanty supper that he ate miles away from that gay quarter wherein Percival Holcombe, who----" Rosella paused for sheer breath. This sort did not need to be read. It was declined already. She picked up the next. It was in an underwear-box of green pasteboard. "The staid old town of Salem," it read, "was all astir one bright and sunny morning in the year 1604." Rosella groaned. "Another!" she said. "Now," she continued, speaking to herself and shutting her eyes--"now about the next page the 'portly burgess' will address the heroine as 'Mistress,' and will say, 'An' whither away so early?'" She turned over to verify. She was wrong. The portly burgess had said: "Good morrow, Mistress Priscilla. An' where away so gaily bedizened?" She sighed as she put the manuscript away. "Why, and, oh, why _will_ they do it!" she murmured. The next one, 1123, was a story "Compiled from the Memoirs of One Perkin Althorpe, Esq., Sometime Field-Coronet in His Majesty's Troop of Horse," and was sown thick with objurgation--"Ods-wounds!" "Body o' me!" "A murrain on thee!" "By my halidom!" and all the rest of the sweepings and tailings of Scott and the third-rate romanticists. "Declined," said Rosella, firmly, tossing it aside. She turned to 1124: "About three o'clock of a roseate day in early spring two fashionables of the softer sex, elegantly arrayed, might have been observed sauntering languidly down Fifth Avenue. "'Are you going to Mrs. Van Billion's musicale tonight?' inquired the older of the two, a tall and striking demi-brunette, turning to her companion. "'No, indeed,' replied the person thus addressed, a blonde of exquisite coloring. 'No, indeed. The only music one hears there is the chink of silver dollars. Ha! ha! ha! ha!'" Rosella winced as if in actual physical anguish. "And the author calls it a 'social satire'!" she exclaimed. "How can she! How can she!" She turned to the next. It was written in script that was a model of neatness, margined, correctly punctuated, and addressed, "Harold Vickers," with the town and State. Its title was "The Last Dryad," and the poetry of the phrase stuck in her mind. She read the first lines, then the first page, then two.