nk your pathos is better than your fun!'"

Mr. Lewes sent the story to Blackwood, with the signature of "George
Eliot,"--the first name chosen because it was his own name, and the
last because it pleased her fancy. Mr. Lewes wrote that this story
by a friend of his, showed, according to his judgment, "such humor,
pathos, vivid presentation, and nice observation as have not been
exhibited, in this style, since the _Vicar of Wakefield_."

Mr. John Blackwood accepted the story, but made some comments which
discouraged the author from trying another. Mr. Lewes wrote him the
effects of his words, which he hastened to withdraw, as there was so
much to be said in praise that he really desired more stories from the
same pen, and sent her a check for two hundred and fifty dollars.

This was evidently soothing, as _Mr. Gilfil's Love Story_ and _Janet's
Repentance_ were at once written. Much interest began to be expressed
about the author. Some said Bulwer wrote the sketches. Thackeray
praised them, and Arthur Helps said, "He is a great writer." Copies of
the stories bound together, with the title _Scenes of Clerical
Life_, were sent to Froude, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Ruskin, and
Faraday. Dickens praised the humor and the pathos, and thought the
author was a woman.

Jane Welch Carlyle thought it "a _human_ book, written out of the
heart of a live man, not merely out of the brain of an author, full
of tenderness and pathos, without a scrap of sentimentality, of sense
without dogmatism, of earnestness without twaddle--a book that makes
one feel friends at once and for always with the man or woman who
wrote it." She guessed the author was "a man of middle age, with a
wife, from whom he has got those beautiful _feminine_ touches in his
book, a good many children, and a dog that he has as much fondness for
as I have for my little Nero."

Mr. Lewes was delighted, and said, "Her fame is beginning." George
Eliot was growing happier, for her nature had been somewhat
despondent. She used to say, "Expecting disappointments is the only
form of hope with which I am familiar." She said, "I feel a deep
satisfaction in having done a bit of faithful work that will perhaps
remain, like a primrose-root in the hedgerow, and gladden and chasten
human hearts in years to come." "'Conscience goes to the hammering
in of nails' is my gospel," she would say. "Writing is part of my
religion, and I can write no word that is not prompted from within