r a newspaper office, and
finally, when the paternal Slott put him in the House of Refuge, he
started a weekly in there, and called it the _House of Refuge Record_;
and one day he slid over the wall and went down to the _Era_ office,
where he changed his name to Blott, and began his career on that paper
with an article on "Our Reformatory Institutions for the Young." Then
old Slott surrendered to what seemed to be a combination of manifest
destiny and goat's milk, and permitted him to pursue his profession.
The major, _The Mail_ alleges, has the instinct so strong that if he
should fall into the crater of Vesuvius his first thought on striking
bottom would be to write to somebody to ask for a free pass to come
out with. "But," continued _The Mail_, "you would hardly believe this
story if you ever read _The Patriot_. We often suspect, when we are
looking over that sheet, that the nurse used to mix the goat's milk
with an unfair proportion of water."

The major has a weekly edition in which he publishes serial stories
of a stirring character, and he is always looking out for good ones.
Recently a tale was submitted by a certain Mr. Stack, a young man who
had high ambition without much experience as a writer of fiction.
After waiting a long while and hearing nothing about the story, Mr.
Stack concluded to call upon the major in order to ascertain why
that narrative had not attracted attention. When Stack mentioned his
errand, the major reached for the manuscript; and looking very solemn,
he said,

"Mr. Stack, I don't think I can accept this story. In some respects it
is really wonderful; but I am afraid that if I published it, it would
attract almost too much attention. People would get too wild over it.
We have to be careful. For instance, here in the first chapter you
mention the death of Mrs. McGinnis, the hero's mother. She dies; you
inter Mrs. McGinnis in the cemetery; you give an affecting scene at
the funeral; you run up a monument over her and plant honeysuckle upon
her grave. You create in the reader's mind a strong impression
that Mrs. McGinnis is thoroughly dead. And yet, over here in the
twenty-second chapter, you make a man named Thompson fall in love with
her, and she is married to him, and she goes skipping around through
the rest of the story as lively as a grasshopper, and you all the time
alluding to Thompson as her second husband. You see that kind of thing
won't do. It excites remark. Readers complain