letter. She gave a Brooklyn address, and I went to see her. I found
her," said Fulkerson, with a vague defiance, "a perfect lady. She was
living with an aunt over there; and she had seen better days, when she
was a girl, and worse ones afterward. I don't mean to say her husband
was a bad fellow; I guess he was pretty good; he was her music-teacher;
she met him in Germany, and they got married there, and got through her
property before they came over here. Well, she didn't strike me like a
person that could make much headway in literature. Her story was well
enough, but it hadn't much sand in it; kind of-well, academic, you know.
I told her so, and she understood, and cried a little; but she did the
best she could with the thing, and I took it and syndicated it. She kind
of stuck in my mind, and the first time I went to see the Dryfooses they
were stopping at a sort of family hotel then till they could find a
house--"Fulkerson broke off altogether, and said, "I don't know as I know
just how the Dryfooses struck you, Mrs. March?"

"Can't you imagine?" she answered, with a kindly, smile.

"Yes; but I don't believe I could guess how they would have struck you
last summer when I first saw them. My! oh my! there was the native earth
for you. Mely is a pretty wild colt now, but you ought to have seen her
before she was broken to harness.

"And Christine? Ever see that black leopard they got up there in the
Central Park? That was Christine. Well, I saw what they wanted. They
all saw it--nobody is a fool in all directions, and the Dryfooses are in
their right senses a good deal of the time. Well, to cut a long story
short, I got Mrs. Mandel to take 'em in hand--the old lady as well as the
girls. She was a born lady, and always lived like one till she saw
Mandel; and that something academic that killed her for a writer was just