really kind of you, and in my heart I thank you
for it.

Do not, I entreat you, construe my gratitude into any sense of future
favors,--no such thing; for whatever may be my success with you hereafter,
I am truly deeply grateful for the past. Circumstances, into which I
need not enter, have made me for some years past a resident in a foreign
country, and as my lot has thrown me into a land where the reputation of
writing a book is pretty much on a par with that of picking a pocket, it
may readily be conceived with what warm thankfulness I have caught at any
little testimonies of your approval which chance may have thrown in my way.

Like the reduced gentlewoman who, compelled by poverty to cry fresh eggs
through the streets, added after every call, "I hope nobody hears me;" so
I, finding it convenient, for a not very dissimilar reason, to write books,
keep my authorship as quietly to myself as need be, and comfort me with the
assurance that nobody knows me.

A word now to my critics. Never had any man more reason to be satisfied
with that class than myself. As if you knew and cared for the temperament
of the man you were reviewing; as if you were aware of the fact that it was
at any moment in your power, by a single article of severe censure, to have
extinguished in him forever all effort, all ambition for success,--you have
mercifully extended to him the mildest treatment, and meted out even your
disparagement, with a careful measure.

While I have studied your advice with attention, and read your criticisms
with care, I confess I have trembled more than once before your more
palpable praise; for I thought you might be hoaxing me.

Now and then, to be sure, I have been accused of impressing real
individuals, and compelling them to serve in my book; that this reproach
was unjust, they who know me can best vouch for, while I myself can
honestly aver, that I never took a portrait without the consent of the
sitter.

Others again have fallen foul of me, for treating of things, places, and
people with which I had no opportunity of becoming personally acquainted.
Thus one of my critics has showed that I could not have been a Trinity
College man; and another has denied my military matriculation. Now,
although both my Latin and my learning are on the peace establishment, and
if examined in the movements for cavalry, it is perfectly possible I should
be cautioned, yet as I have both a degree and a commission I might have
b