ing-desk and took up a pen. "If I
write to Mr. Keller under your own eye, do you object to take charge of
my letter?"

I hesitated how to answer. To say the least of it, her request
embarrassed me.

"I don't expect you to give it to Mr. Keller personally," she explained.
"It is of very serious importance to me" (she laid a marked emphasis on
those words) "to be quite sure that my letter has reached him, and that
he has really had the opportunity of reading it. If you will only place
it on his desk in the office, with your own hand, that is all I ask you
to do. For Minna's sake, mind; not for mine!"

For Minna's sake, I consented. She rose directly, and signed to me to
take her place at the desk.

"It will save time," she said, "if you write the rough draft of the
letter from my dictation. I am accustomed to dictate my letters, with
Minna for secretary. Of course, you shall see the fair copy before I seal
it."

She began to walk up and down the little room, with her hands crossed
behind her in the attitude made famous by the great Napoleon. After a
minute of consideration, she dictated the draft as follows:

"Sir,--I am well aware that scandalous reports at Wurzburg have
prejudiced you against me. Those reports, so far as I know, may be summed
up under three heads.

"(First.) That my husband died in debt through my extravagance.

"(Second.) That my respectable neighbors refuse to associate with me.

"(Third.) That I entrapped your son Fritz into asking for my daughter's
hand in marriage, because I knew his father to be a rich man.

"To the first calumny I reply, that the debts are due to expensive
chemical experiments in which my late husband engaged, and that I have
satisfied the creditors to the last farthing. Grant me an audience, and I
will refer you to the creditors themselves.

"To the second calumny I reply, that I received invitations, on my
arrival in Wurzburg after my marriage, from every lady of distinguished
social position in the town. After experience of the society thus offered
to me, I own to having courteously declined subsequent invitations, and
having devoted myself in retirement to my husband, to my infant child,
and to such studies in literature and art as I had time to pursue. Gossip
and scandal, with an eternal accompaniment of knitting, are not to my
taste; and, while I strictly attend to domestic duties, I do not consider
them as constituting, in connection with tea-drinking, the one