If they were gaining I'd stay where I was.---Go and find out
what's the matter with that young woman.
I had noticed that the Young Girl--the storywriter, our Scheherezade, as
I called her--looked as if she had been crying or lying awake half the
night. I found on asking her,--for she is an honest little body and is
disposed to be confidential with me for some reason or other,--that she
had been doing both.
--And what was the matter now, I questioned her in a semi-paternal kind
of way, as soon as I got a chance for a few quiet words with her.
She was engaged to write a serial story, it seems, and had only got as
far as the second number, and some critic had been jumping upon it, she
said, and grinding his heel into it, till she couldn't bear to look at
it. He said she did not write half so well as half a dozen other young
women. She did n't write half so well as she used to write herself. She
hadn't any characters and she had n't any incidents. Then he went to
work to show how her story was coming out, trying to anticipate
everything she could make of it, so that her readers should have nothing
to look forward to, and he should have credit for his sagacity in
guessing, which was nothing so very wonderful, she seemed to think.
Things she had merely hinted and left the reader to infer, he told right
out in the bluntest and coarsest way.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110