"Ting-a-ling-a-ling," with vigorous vexation. I gave no heed. "Hand up that fare!" he shouted through an aperture; the passengers looked at each other; my face turned crimson. "I haven't any money," I whispered confidentially, in my great fright and desperation, to a big Jew with diamond shirt front and forbidding countenance. What can I do?"

"Oh, Miss," he answered kindly, "it's of no consequence, just let me hand up the fare and there's an end of it!" At that moment his countenance seemed fairly angelic. "You are so kind," I faltered almost with tears. "Indeed, it is an honor; don't mention it," he said. Forever and a day that act of his made me think better of mankind, trust more in human nature. I thanked him again as the 'bus pulled up for me at the St. Nicholas; he lifted his hat and was gone, the great, beak-nosed, unmistakable Jew. I went up to my room and cried at remembrance of his kindness.

That night we went to Wallack's Theatre. It was the first and last time in all my life that I ever attended the theatre in my own land. I said to myself: "This is the most respectable one there is; 'Rosedale, or the Rifle Ball' is a reputable play and Lester Wallack is at his best in it; no one knows me and no harm will be done." This I then stated to my father's friend, and he agreed, both of us being good Christians and church-members. We went-it was an evening of wonder and delight, but I forbear to state who of our Western friends and fellow church-members we then and there beheld, who had gone from the same motives that actuated me!

All my life I have read the "Amusement column" of the daily paper and often greatly enjoyed it. For the stage I have strong natural liking. In England I saw Sothern as David Garrick, and it lifted up my spirit as a sermon might. But in this age, with my purposes and its demoralization, the stage is not for

Sometime, somewhere, it may have the harm taken out of it, but where or when, this generation, and many more to follow this, will ask, I fear, in vain.

A week or so later, my good father came on to take me to New England, having decided, perhaps, that my embassy was not so foolish as he had thought at first. Together we went up the Hudson to Sing-Sing, where Rev. Dr. Randolph S. Foster

First Proof Sheets and First Critic!

511 (now Bishop) was pastor of the M. E. Church. This noble man had been President of the University at Evanston, and I wanted his opinion and influence in my new enterprise. Cornelius J. Walsh's family had driven in their elegant carriage from Newark to visit Dr. Foster. I remember my palpitations of heart as they all assembled to hear me read my manuscript. Annie, the Doctor's gifted daughter, was the one I feared and loved the most; upon her verdict hung my hopes. I read the whole little book at one sitting, and when I finished they all sat crying-it was a circle of white handkerchiefs, and nobody said a word.

How I loved them for their sympathy and thanked God for raising up such friends for Mary and for me!

Dr. Foster took the manuscript to the city next day. Harper & Brothers were his friends; most of them had been his parishioners. They accepted it at once, asked the Doctor to write an Introduction, which he did, and so the life of my sister, playmate, and comrade came to the world.

What a delight were my beautiful proof-sheets, the first I ever saw; what a marvel the letters that accompanied them from Thomas Glenn, the long-time proof-reader of Harpers, whose penmanship seemed to me vastly plainer than print! What a comfort to dedicate the little book to my beloved parents! Dear father said very little about it, but five years after, when he had passed away, we found a copy locked up with Mary's photograph in a secret drawer of his desk. And what a rude assault was the Round Table criticism! Up to that time all had been plain sailing; the press, so far as I could learn, had dealt gently with the record that was so sacred in my eyes. But one day a friend drew from his pocket a copy of the New York Round Table, and proceeded to read what Gail Hamilton afterward called "A bludgeon criticism."

It was my first heavy blow from a "reviewer," and it struck so deeply home that I can not forget it in any world. In these years, when to be "taken to task " is a matter of course, and to be bitterly blamed, or even cruelly maligned, is not uncommon, I have learned a calm philosophy that neutralizes the virus and takes the harm out of the wound. But in those days such blows bewildered me, more from their manner than their matter, for criticism I expected, and had been bred to believe that it was

wholesome, which I do now believe with more intelligence than I could bring to bear upon the subject then.

Being in need of money at one time, I wrote my publishers that if they would give me a hundred copies I would forego the ten per cent royalty on which we had agreed. This they did, and that is all that ever came to me, except that in later years I gave away a hundred or more copies furnished without charge by them. In 1885 I bought the plates and presented them to our own temperance publishing house in Chicago. This is a fair sample of the financial side of my pen-holder work.

Each new book is to me a new impoverishment; I give them away freely, never having been able to keep a book of any sort, least of all, my own, any more than I can an umbrella or a section of the atmosphere. All of my ventures combined have not netted me one thousand dollars.

From England I have encouraging accounts of the little book's success, and I have had no more welcome greeting than from those who, wherever I go, speak gently to me of the good that Mary's life has done them. So the sweet young soul lives on in minds made better by her presence, and still in artless language tries to "tell everybody to be good."

Messrs. Morgan & Scott, publishers of the English edition, courteously allowed me a royalty amounting now to about two hundred dollars.

As years go by I find that my jottings gain wider hospitality, my last two magazine articles having been for two monthlies most unlike The Homiletic and The Forum. My article for the first has been printed in full as a book entitled, "Woman in the Pulpit," by D. Lothrop & Co., Boston.

And now, to sum up what I have learned by the things sought, suffered and succeeded in, along my pathway, pen in hand, let me urge every young woman whose best vehicle of expression is the written word, not to be driven from her kingdom by impatience as was I.

I. If you can have a roof over your head, a table prepared before you and clothes to wear, let them be furnished by your "natural protectors," and do you study and practice with your pen. Read Robert Louis Stevenson's revelations of how he came to be a master of style; he worked and waited for it, that is all.