from really popular authors. Marion was charmed with your heroine
[Dick rather likes Marion; and doesn't think Jack treats her with the
consideration she deserves], and I have no doubt women in general
will admire her, but your hero--you know I always speak my
mind--is rather a duffer. You should go into the world more, and
sketch from life. The Vice-Chancellor gave me great pleasure by
speaking of your early poems very highly the other day, and I assure
you it was quite a drop down for me, to find that he was referring to
some other writer of the same name. Of course I did not undeceive
him. I wish, my dear fellow, you would write stories in one volume
instead of three. You write a _short_ story capitally.

'Yours ever,

'JACK.'

Tom the surgeon belongs to that very objectionable class of humanity,
called, by ancient writers, wags:

'MY DEAR DICK,

'I cannot help writing to thank you for the relief afforded to me by
the perusal of your last volume. I had been suffering from neuralgia,
and every prescription in the Pharmacopæia for producing sleep had
failed until I tried _that_. Dear Maggie [an odious woman, who calls
novels "light literature," and affects to be blue] read it to me
herself, so it was given every chance; but I think you must
acknowledge that it was a little spun out. Maggie assures me--I have
not read them myself, for you know what little time I have for such
things--that the first two volumes, with the exception of the