I thought I would try a course
of cousins. I had enough of them to furnish out a whole gallery of
portraits. There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her; Lucretia, more
correctly. She was a cripple. Her left lower limb had had something
happen to it, and she walked with a crutch. Her patience under her trial
was very pathetic and picturesque, so to speak,--I mean adapted to
the tender parts of a story; nothing could work up better in a
melting paragraph. But I could not, of course, describe her particular
infirmity; that would point her out at once. I thought of shifting the
lameness to the right lower limb, but even that would be seen through.
So I gave the young woman that stood for her in my story a lame elbow,
and put her arm in a sling, and made her such a model of uncomplaining
endurance that my grandmother cried over her as if her poor old heart
would break. She cried very easily, my grandmother; in fact, she had
such a gift for tears that I availed myself of it, and if you remember
old Judy, in my novel 'Honi Soit' (Honey Sweet, the booksellers called
it),--old Judy, the black-nurse,--that was my grandmother. She had
various other peculiarities, which I brought out one by one, and
saddled on to different characters. You see she was a perfect mine of
singularities and idiosyncrasies. After I had used her up pretty well,
I came dawn upon my poor relations. They were perfectly fair game; what
better use could I put them to? I studied them up very carefully, and as
there were a good many of them I helped myself freely. They lasted me,
with occasional intermissions, I should say, three or four years. I had
to be very careful with my poor relations,--they were as touchy as they
could be; and as I felt bound to send a copy of my novel, whatever it
might be, to each one of them,--there were as many as a dozen,--I took
care to mix their characteristic features, so that, though each might
suspect I meant the other, no one should think I meant him or her. I
got through all my relations at last except my father and mother. I had
treated my brothers and sisters pretty fairly, all except Elisha and
Joanna. The truth is they both had lots of odd ways,--family traits,
I suppose, but were just different enough from each other to figure
separately in two different stories. These two novels made me some
little trouble; for Elisha said he felt sure that I meant Joanna in one
of them, and quarrelled with me about it; and Joanna vowe