hen I asked for a story from your pen, to receive
something like 'His Wife's Deceased Sister,' and I must own that I
am very much disappointed."

I was so filled with anger when I read this note that I openly
objurgated "His Wife's Deceased Sister." "You must excuse me," I
said to my astonished wife, "for expressing myself thus in your
presence; but that confounded story will be the ruin of me yet.
Until it is forgotten nobody will ever take anything I write."

"And you cannot expect it ever to be forgotten," said Hypatia, with
tears in her eyes.

It is needless for me to detail my literary efforts in the course of
the next few months. The ideas of the editors with whom my principal
business had been done, in regard to my literary ability, had been
so raised by my unfortunate story of "His Wife's Deceased Sister"
that I found it was of no use to send them anything of lesser merit.
And as to the other journals which I tried, they evidently
considered it an insult for me to send them matter inferior to that
by which my reputation had lately risen. The fact was that my
successful story had ruined me. My income was at end, and want
actually stared me in the face; and I must admit that I did not like
the expression of its countenance. It was of no use for me to try to
write another story like "His Wife's Deceased Sister." I could not
get married every time I began a new manuscript, and it was the
exaltation of mind caused by my wedded felicity which produced that
story.

"It's perfectly dreadful!" said my wife. "If I had had a sister, and
she had died, I would have thought it was my fault."

"It could not be your fault," I answered, "and I do not think it was
mine. I had no intention of deceiving anybody into the belief that I
could do that sort of thing every time, and it ought not to be
expected of me. Suppose Raphael's patrons had tried to keep him
screwed up to the pitch of the Sistine Madonna, and had refused to
buy anything which was not as good as that. In that case I think he
would have occupied a much earlier and narrower grave than that on
which Mr. Morris Moore hangs his funeral decorations."

"But, my dear," said Hypatia, who was posted on such subjects, "the
Sistine Madonna was one of his latest paintings."

"Very true," said I; "but if he had married, as I did, he would have
painted it earlier."

I was walking homeward one afternoon about this time, when I met
Barbel--a man I had known well in my ear