word of Mr. Wright, who claims to have been for years a member of this mysterious body, and to have an inner knowledge of what it likes and dislikes. "The Woman in White," "Lady Audley's Secret," and "It is Never Too Late to Mend" are, he asserts, familiar names with a certain stratum of the Unknown Public; "Midshipman Easy" is an old friend, and "The Pathfinder" and "The Last of the Mohicans" enjoy a fitful popularity. But its real favorite, its admitted pride and delight, is Ouida. The "genteel young ladies of the counter," and their hard-working sisterhood of dressmakers and milliners and lodging-house keepers, all accept Ouida as a literary oracle. "They quite agree with herself that she is a woman of genius. They recognize in her the embodiment of their own inexpressible imaginings of aristocratic people and things. They believe in her Byronic characters, and their Arabian-Nights-like wealth and power; in her titanic and delightfully wicked guardsmen; in her erratic or ferocious, but always gorgeous princes, her surpassingly lovely, but more or less immoral grand dames, and her wonderful Bohemians of both sexes. They
