small, cramped, feminine hand. I replied, when I could, that it seemed to
me unfit for the purposes of transient newspaper publication, yet if he
declined it I should probably buy it myself. He replied that he had
already examined it and decided to decline it, and it was only to know
whether I, not he, could use it that I had been asked to read it.

I took it to an attorney, and requested him, under certain strict
conditions, to obtain it for me with all its rights.

"What is it?"

"It is the minute account, written by one of the travelers, a pretty
little Creole maiden of seventeen, of an adventurous journey made, in
1795, from New Orleans through the wilds of Louisiana, taking six weeks to
complete a tour that could now be made in less than two days."

But this is written by some one else; see, it says

[Handwriting: Voyage de ma grand'mere]

"Yes," I rejoined, "it purports to be a copy. We must have the little
grandmother's original manuscript, written in 1822; that or nothing."

So a correspondence sprang up with a gentle and refined old Creole lady
with whom I later had the honor to become acquainted and now count among
my esteemed friends--grand-daughter of the grandmother who, after
innumerable recountings by word of mouth to mother, sisters, brothers,
friends, husband, children, and children's children through twenty-seven
years of advancing life, sat down at last and wrote the oft-told tale for
her little grand-children, one of whom, inheriting her literary instinct