rst is the beginning, the second the middle, and the third is the
end.

The painter who, in times of yore, exposed his canvass to universal
criticism, and found to his mortification that there was not a particle
of his composition which had not been pronounced defective by one
pseudo-critic or another, did not receive severer castigation than I
have experienced from the _unsolicited_ remarks of "damned good-natured
friends."

"I like your first and second volume," said a tall, long-chinned,
short-sighted blue, dressed in yellow, peering into my face, as if her
eyes were magnifying glasses, and she was obtaining the true focus of
vision, "but you fall off in your last, which is all about that _nasty_
line-of-battle ship."

"I don't like your plot, sir," brawls out in a stentorian voice an
elderly gentleman; "I don't like your plot, sir," repeated he with an
air of authority, which he had long assumed, from supposing because
people would not be at the trouble of contradicting his opinions, that
they were incontrovertible--"there is nothing but death."

"Death, my dear sir," replied I, as if I was hailing the look-out man at
the mast-head, and hoping to soften him with my intentional bull; "is
not death, sir, a true picture of human life?"

"Ay, ay," growled he, either not hearing or not _taking_; "it's all very
well, but--there's too much killing in it."

"In a novel, sir, killing's no murder, you surely will admit; and you
must also allow something for professional feeling--`'Tis my
occupation;' and after five-and-twenty years of constant practice,
whether I wield the sword or the pen, the force of habit--"

"It won't do, sir," interrupted he; "the public don't like it.
Otherwise," continued this hyper-critic, softening a little, "some of
the chapters are amusing, and on the whole, it may be said to be
rather--that is--not unpleasantly written."

"I like your first and third volume, but not your second," squeaked out
_something_ intended to have been a woman, with shoulder-blades and
collar-bones, as De Ville would say, most strongly developed.

"Well now, I don't exactly agree with you, my dear Miss Pegoo; I think
the second and third volumes are by far the most _readable_," exclaimed
_another thing_, perched upon a chair, with her feet dangling halfway
between her seat and the carpet.

"If I might presume upon my long-standing in the service, Captain ---,"
said a pompous general officer,--whose back appeare