"Too bad!" said Stack. "I forgot what I'd said about her eyes when I
wrote that scene with the villain."

"And here, in the twentieth chapter, you say that Magruder was stabbed
with a bowie-knife in the hands of the Spaniard, and in the next
chapter you give an account of the _post-mortem_ examination, and make
the doctors hunt for the bullet and find it embedded in his liver.
Even patient readers can't remain calm under such circumstances. They
lose control of themselves."

"It's unfortunate," said Stack.

"Now, the way you manage the Browns in the story is also exasperating.
First you represent Mrs. Brown as taking her twins around to church to
be christened. In the middle of the book you make Mrs. Brown lament
that she never had any children, and you wind up the story by bringing
in Mrs. Brown with her grandson in her arms just after having caused
Mr. Brown to state to the clergyman that the only child he ever had
died in his fourth year. Just think of the effect of such a thing on
the public mind! Why, this story would fill all the insane asylums in
the country."

"Those Browns don't seem to be very definite, somehow," said Stack,
thoughtfully.

"Worst of all," said major, "in chapter thirty-one you make the lovers
resolve upon suicide, and you put them in a boat and drift them over
Niagara Falls. Twelve chapters farther on you suddenly introduce them
walking in the twilight in a leafy lane, and although afterward she
goes into a nunnery and takes the black veil because he has been