war--"

"That's just what I have done," she interrupted. "I was a Union woman, in
the Confederacy. I couldn't talk; I had to write. I was in the siege of
Vicksburg from beginning to end."

"Leave your manuscript with me," I said. "If, on examining it, I find I
can recommend it to a publisher, I will do so. But remember what I have
already told you--the passage of an unknown writer's work through an older
author's hands is of no benefit to it whatever. It is a bad sign rather
than a good one. Your chances of acceptance will be at least no less if
you send this to the publishers yourself."

No, she would like me to intervene.

How my attorney friend and I took a two days' journey by rail, reading the
manuscript to each other in the Pullman car; how a young newly married
couple next us across the aisle, pretending not to notice, listened with
all their might; how my friend the attorney now and then stopped to choke
down tears; and how the young stranger opposite came at last, with
apologies, asking where this matter would be published and under what
title, I need not tell. At length I was intercessor for a manuscript that
publishers would not lightly decline. I bought it for my little museum of
true stories, at a price beyond what I believe any magazine would have
paid--an amount that must have filled the widow's heart with joy, but as
certainly was not beyond its worth to me. I have already contributed a
part of this manuscript to "The Century" as one of its "Wax-papers." But
by permission it is restored here to its original place.

Judge Farrar, with whom I enjoyed a slight but valued acquaintance,