iticized.

She did her best for the children, they being the public for whom she
wrote, and laboured stoutly to supply the demand always in the mouths of
voracious youth--'More stories; more right away!' Her family objected to
this devotion at their expense, and her health suffered; but for a time
she gratefully offered herself up on the altar of juvenile literature,
feeling that she owed a good deal to the little friends in whose sight
she had found favour after twenty years of effort.

But a time came when her patience gave out; and wearying of being a
lion, she became a bear in nature as in name, and returning to her den,
growled awfully when ordered out. Her family enjoyed the fun, and had
small sympathy with her trials, but Jo came to consider it the worse
scrape of her life; for liberty had always been her dearest possession,
and it seemed to be fast going from her. Living in a lantern soon loses
its charm, and she was too old, too tired, and too busy to like it. She
felt that she had done all that could reasonably be required of her when
autographs, photographs, and autobiographical sketches had been sown
broadcast over the land; when artists had taken her home in all its
aspects, and reporters had taken her in the grim one she always
assumed on these trying occasions; when a series of enthusiastic
boarding-schools had ravaged her grounds for trophies, and a steady
stream of amiable pilgrims had worn her doorsteps with their respectful
feet; when servants left after a week's trial of the bell that rang all
day; when her husband was forced to guard her at meals, and the boys
to cover her retreat out of back windows on certain occasions when
enterprising guests walked in unannounced at unfortunate moments.

A sketch of one day may perhaps explain the state of things, offer some
excuse for the unhappy woman, and give a hint to the autograph-fiend now
rampant in the land; for it is a true tale.

'There ought to be a law to protect unfortunate authors,' said Mrs Jo
one morning soon after Emil's arrival, when the mail brought her an
unusually large and varied assortment of letters. 'To me it is a more
vital subject than international copyright; for time is money, peace is
health, and I lose both with no return but less respect for my fellow
creatures and a wild desire to fly into the wilderness, since I cannot
shut my doors even in free America.'

'Lion-hunters are awful when in search of their prey. If they could