every body says your magazine needs. Let me read you but one chapter?"
A pitcher of water and a tumbler were standing upon the table, and the editor, taking up the pitcher, filled the tumbler fall.
"There, Madam," said he, "you see that when a vessel is full it will hold no more; see, another drop and it overflows. I am full, my room is full, desks, drawers, baskets, boxes, magazine, and all are full. I can receive no more."
"Just one more will make no great difference, I am sure," said the authoress, paying no other heed to the forcible illustration of the editor, than to smile most benignly and patiently while he demonstrated the simple fact. "Come, let me read my introductory chapter, and I am sure you will want to read the rest yourself"
"Madam, I have been compelled to deny thousands of such requests," said he, biting his lips.
"But a lady!" said she. "You might refuse to hear a gentleman, but you would not refuse a lady?"
The editor paused a moment, and he was ruined. He was naturally tender-hearted, and he thought of his wife and his mother; what if either of them should ever be compelled to solicit a favor from an editor! and how would he feel to hear they had been refused?
"Madam," said he, with a softened tone, "it is quite impossible for me to hear you read your novel now; but leave it with me, and I will read it through at my earliest leisure."
"I may depend upon you?" she said half-doubtingly, as she deposited the roll on his table.
"I pledge you my word as a gentleman," he said.
"I will call again soon," said the lady, who courtsied and smiled, and then retired, followed by her page.
But she had scarcely left the sanctum when the wretched man, as he took up the roll of manuscript, and tossed it upon a shelf, where lay heaps of similar bundles, repented of what he had done.
"What a fool I was!" he exclaimed, as he glanced around him, "to make that rash promise! There is O'Mulligan, who will challenge me if I do not read his essay on the Round Towers; there is the Reverend Doctor Slospoken, who will denounce me to his congre-
