d and declared
that Elnathan, in the other, stood for brother 'Lisha, and that it was
a real mean thing to make fun of folks' own flesh and blood, and treated
me to one of her cries. She was n't handsome when she cried, poor, dear
Joanna; in fact, that was one of the personal traits I had made use of
in the story that Elisha found fault with.

"So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for
yourself I had no choice. There was one great advantage in dealing with
them,--I knew them so thoroughly. One naturally feels a certain delicacy
it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who have been
so near to him. One's mother, for instance: suppose some of her little
ways were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of them would
furnish amusement to great numbers of readers; it would not be without
hesitation that a writer of delicate sensibility would draw her
portrait, with all its whimsicalities, so plainly that it should be
generally recognized. One's father is commonly of tougher fibre than
one's mother, and one would not feel the same scruples, perhaps, in
using him professionally as material in a novel; still, while you are
employing him as bait,--you see I am honest and plain-spoken, for your
characters are baits to catch readers with,--I would follow kind
Izaak Walton's humane counsel about the frog you are fastening to your
fish-hook: fix him artistically, as he directs, but in so doing I use
him as though you loved him.'

"I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen
who have anything effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all
my friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives. It has
occurred to me that I might open a new field in the family connection of
my father-in-law and mother-in-law. We have been thinking of paying them
a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of studying them
and their relatives and visitors. I have long wanted a good chance for
getting acquainted with the social sphere several grades below that to
which I am accustomed, and I have no doubt that I shall find matter for
half a dozen new stories among those connections of mine. Besides, they
live in a Western city, and one doesn't mind much how he cuts up the
people of places he does n't himself live in. I suppose there is not
really so much difference in people's feelings, whether they live in
Bangor or Omaha, but one's nerves can't be expected to stretch ac