A Rebellious Heroine

aster of wha

goods, my

g of th

yet not failed to cultivate his imagination in certain directions. I may observe in passing, and in this connection, that if I had a son whom it was my ambition to see making his mark in the world as a writer of romance, as distinguished from the real, I

turned, and that he had become more like himself than he ha

ry, and I feel confident now that I shall get it done. Furthermore, I shall send the chapters to Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick as I write them, so that th

im to break away from the principles he had so steadfastly adhered to hitherto and become a martinet. He struck me as being more than likely to crack the whip like a ring-master in his present mood than to play the indulgent author, and

he simply ran her independence into the ground. She was not only rebellious to me, but she was impertinent to him. Her attitude toward him was not nature at all; it was not realism, because she is a woman of good breeding, and would naturally be the last to treat any man, distasteful or not, with such excessive rudeness. I compelled him to go on and propose to her, though af

as wrathful with Marguerite, and wishing to assuage his anger before it carried him to

ed how things were going I should have gone back and started afresh, and kept on doing so until I had her submissive. A hunter may balk at a high fence, but the rider must not give in to him unless he wishes to let the animal get the b

wight might not offend the readers of the highly moral magazine, in which the story first appeared, by marrying a widow whom he had been forced by Mr. Darrow to love before her husband died. Mr. Darrow manufactured, with five strokes of his pen, an engine and a tunnel to crush the life out of the poor fellow, whom an immoral romancer would have allowed to live on and marry the lady, and with perfect propriety too, since the hero and the heroine were both of them the very models of virtue, in sp

be, so must it

at you've taken down life as it is; for you may have an astigmatism, for all you know

through such complications as I choose to have her, encountering whatever villains I may happen to find most convenient, and to complete her

new what to say. I couldn't beg Harley to stick to his realism and not indulge in compulsion, because I had often jeered at him for not infusing a little more of the dramatic into his stories, even if it had to be "lugged in by the ears," as he put it. Nor was he in any mood for me to tell him of my breach of faith-the mere knowledge that she had promised to be docile out of charity would have stu

led out the Professor, tapping

at?" replied St

re," said t

tual-looking person with your name u

arley. "It does f

are a great man-man with an idea, and all that. Is th

lost," he said. "As to that picture, they're bringing out

r," I put in, "let me have it, will you?

e Professor, handing over the publicat

s that's pleasa

" said the Professor, "is

oke nicely of Harley's previous efforts, and judiciously, as it seemed to me. He had not got to the top of the ladder yet, but he w

mapped out for himself, and keeping constantly in mind the principles which seemed to him at the beginning of his career to be right. It has been this persistent and consistent adherence to principle that has gained for Mr. Harley his hearing,

, tossing the journ

blushed to the r

he read. "Stick to your colors, and let her stick to he

really intended to do horrible things with her, my boy. Trust me, if I do lead

Brooklyn dry-goods shop?

has no business to live in the same hemisphere with a woman like Marguerite Andrews. When I th

ree of the four acts of an intensely exciting melodrama depended upon a woman's not seeing a large navy revolver, which lay on the table directly before her eyes in the first. The play was full of blood and replete with thunder,

the precipice in the second act would have been alive at this moment." And finally he demanded: "Do you suppose a heroine like Marguerite Andrews would have overlooked the comma on the postal card that woman read in the third act, and so made the fourth act possibl

her things I could talk about-"like lemonade and elephants," as the small boy said. "Let it go at that. It was an interesting play, and that's all plays

walked home with him and tried to get him interested in a farce I was at work on, but it was of no u

or, candidly, I'd like to talk about something else, and until Mar

me to-morrow night," said he. "I've got

e only two words down

e they?"

and Andrew

e only ones I'm sure of," s

, the chapters had come as easily as any writing he ever did. For docility, Marguerite was a perfect wonder. Not only did she follow out his wishes; sh

ts effect on Stuart. Her amiability was proving a great attraction to his susceptible soul, and I was beginning to fear that Stuart was slowly

ntially to myself, "if Stuart Harley were to f