That experience was enough for me. While I might become a successful reporter, in doing so I fear I should lose that regard for the rights of others, the petty conscience of every-day life, that is conspicuously absent in so many of the men we meet. While this incident has not altered my liking for newspaper work, it has very materially modified my ideas concerning certain branches of it. From the reporter's desk to the editor's chair is a natural and easy transition; and the outsider, unless he possesses the genius of George Kennan and his companions, must go through this stage of preliminary training. Those of us who have no influence, no startling genius, and a decided dislike to becoming inquisitive nuisances feel that we are overweighted in the journalistic handicap. What course shall we pursue, that what few merits we possess shall not be overshadowed by the lack of one quality, which may be a useful one to the reporter, but is usually known and avoided in the ordinary man under the vulgar name of "gall"? _Herbert Corey._ CINCINNATI, Ohio. A PLEA FOR THE NOM DE PLUME. Once upon a time there lived a good little girl whom everybody loved. She had six aunts, four uncles, and twenty-seven cousins, besides a brother and two sisters. All these relatives, of course, especially loved her, for that was only natural. And they were all very glad, indeed, to help her in every way possible. She was a bright little thing as well as good, and by and by she thought she would see whether any of the papers and magazines cared to know of the things she thought, and she wrote a morsel of an article and timidly sent it off. But before she sent it to the editor she read it to her sisters, each of whom had some slight correction to make; and she showed it to Aunt Emma, who was quite of a literary turn of mind, and Aunt Emma read it to her daughter Mabel, who had just left college. These ladies so marked up the carefully written manuscript that the good little girl had to copy it all before it was fit to be sent. After it had been gone eight days the article was returned. This made the little girl very sad, and she wept. The other five aunts, and the uncles, and all the cousins were by this time interested, and they comforted her with many words, and censured her with a great many more, and gave her a great deal of good advice. But the little girl finally got so confused by the many conflicting opinions offered that she hardly knew what to do or say. One moment she would think she would write this and another that, and some of the time she declared that she would never write another line at all. But one day a very pretty idea came into her mind all at once, and she did think it too sweet to be lost. So she wrote it down just as it came to her, and sent it away, and never told a soul a word about it.