in her eyes; but never mind, I'll make the fun for you that'll make it as green as a country landscape."
"I have already commenced it with too romantic an affair I fear; it sounds so sentimental and school girl-like. It is so hard to find a beginning."
"If you can write anything of that sort you ought to thank your stars and take courage. The charm of a story is to have somethin' in it that never did happen nor never could, and it must be full of all manner of shines to make it take."
"I don't know about that. Stories are most successful that represent the real passions and emotions of the soul, and are most true of life."
"Fudge! who cares whether they are true or not, if they are only funny, but I want to hear yours to see what you can write, whether its worth cryin' over."
"It opens with a widower, Mr. Buzport and his daughter, Merilinda."
"Capital choice o' names! I like 'em, they sound so merry. Buzport, that means buss."
"Mr. Buzport is her father, not her lover, so you needn't come to the kissing part yet."
"That's just like you, can't think of anything but a lover connected with a buss, while all I was thinkin' on was a good hearty smack, seems as if I could hear it now."
"The place where they lived was one of traditionary interest. In the times of the skirmishes between the early settlers and the savages, a man had lived there, a Quaker by birth, who was a great friend of the Indians and suffered very little from their depre-
