modeling upon was Daniel Defoe; that’s where he got that simplicity which did not hesitate at times to be prosy, well aware that a plain true narrative has always the defect of its quality, monotony, repetition, a tedious dwelling on detail. There is nothing in fiction better imagined or imagined with more veracity than the pitiful importance which his efforts at braiding baskets, and making pottery vessels, assume to the castaway Robinson in his solitude, and yet it is not vividly interesting reading. There is nothing--also--better imagined than George Warrington’s escape from Fort Duquesne, with the help of the Indian squaw; but it is rather tiresome, on the whole; and the final touch where the poor squaw, instead of turning out a lovely, romantic Pocahontas, becomes a perfect nuisance when they reach the settlements, getting drunk and creating scandal--that is a masterpiece of realism; and we all hate to know about it! Re-reading Defoe, and reading Thackeray more carefully, with side excursions, as it were, into reading Swift and Mr. Thomas Hardy, it seemed to me that I might eventually learn the trick. I take it that I have actually succeeded once or twice by the fact that nobody will believe that I have ever invented a single person or incident! People are eternally wanting to know who was the original of this or that character, or what is worse, identifying characters with somebodies whom, ten to one, I have never laid eyes on! Others have insisted that they knew very well I was cutting the tale out of whole cloth, but that I had no ‘vision,’ was ‘too photographic,’ etc. It may well be so; my cup is very small, and I must drink out of it, willy-nilly. The critics, as I have said, were rather put to it for something to say, when I appeared; most of them adopted a cautious, middle-of-the-road policy; you see I _might_ turn out to be a writer after all, with my bewildering deliberation, my ‘careless fluency’--I have seen this phrase used in description of my writing--my emphasis of the commonplace. Of late years, I think they have got used to me; for that matter, when all’s said and done, my contributions to literature are not of such importance as to arrest a critic long.