Every little victory brings a new enemy. When one hears the “catty” things people say, one can but wonder what catty things are said about one’s self. People say malicious things, suggest improprieties without foundation, assert motives that have never been born. In fact, Society is often cruel and hard. It eats and drinks too much, gets overwrought and tired, and says nasty things it does not mean. The life of many an ordinary Society man or woman is despicable. They are the people who are “too busy” to do anything useful, whose lives are no good to anyone, and therefore boring to themselves. Better work and be busy with something tangible, than idle life away in social dissipation. Yet how good and kind and generous most people are, and how hard many of them work for the good of others! The vicissitudes of writers are many. I once suffered the loss in the post of an entire chapter of a manuscript. That missing link never turned up, and as I stupidly had kept no copy, while the rough notes thereof were of the roughest order, it was considerably difficult to rewrite the passages; indeed, impossible to remember the exact details of what the missing fragment formerly contained. Oh, the exasperation of it!—it was a thankless, dreary task. How on earth Carlyle ever wrote his _French Revolution_ over again is a marvel which fills me with admiration, whenever anything brings back the memory of all that labour which the second edition of that silly little chapter of an ordinary book cost me. Work, too, is often wasted. Full of enthusiasm, after a peep at the gorgeous Eastern life on my return from Morocco in the ’nineties, I started a novel, which was nearly completed when the agent discovered there was already a somewhat similar book on the market. The appended letters speak for themselves and show the generosity of a man like Grant Allen in replying to a young and almost unknown author: “DEAR MR. GRANT ALLEN, “I am much distressed! I was in Morocco this spring, and took copious notes, which I have since been busily writing up into a story, now nearing completion. “Telling the plot to my host the other night, he exclaimed, ‘That is very like Grant Allen’s _Tents of Shem_.’ He found the book, and I have just read it, and put it down feeling very sad. “You make English characters play the drama in Algiers, I do the same in Tangier. “You have a naturalist, F.R.S.; I have a Science Professor from Cambridge. “A Moorish girl falls in love with an Englishman. “A Moorish man falls in love with my heroine. “Indeed, the similarity of idea is in many ways extraordinary. I don’t see what to do unless I rewrite the whole thing, the work of some months, and even then, your story is splendid and your name famous; mine is simple and my name more or less obscure. “It is altogether very disquieting. “Being an author yourself, I felt I must tell you of my woes.” “MY DEAR MADAM,