droll and thorny one, as all things have in this curious world of
ours. After the first surprise, incredulity, and joy, which came to
Jo, with the ingratitude of human nature, she soon tired of renown,
and began to resent her loss of liberty. For suddenly the admiring
public took possession of her and all her affairs, past, present, and
to come. Strangers demanded to look at her, question, advise, warn,
congratulate, and drive her out of her wits by well-meant but very
wearisome attentions. If she declined to open her heart to them, they
reproached her; if she refused to endow her pet charities, relieve
private wants, or sympathize with every ill and trial known to
humanity, she was called hard-hearted, selfish, and haughty; if she
found it impossible to answer the piles of letters sent her, she was
neglectful of her duty to the admiring public; and if she preferred
the privacy of home to the pedestal upon which she was requested to
pose, 'the airs of literary people' were freely criticized.

She did her best for the children, they being the public for whom she
wrote, and laboured stoutly to supply the demand always in the mouths
of voracious youth--'More stories; more right away!' Her family
objected to this devotion at their expense, and her health suffered;
but for a time she gratefully offered herself up on the altar of
juvenile literature, feeling that she owed a good deal to the little
friends in whose sight she had found favour after twenty years of
effort.

But a time came when her patience gave out; and wearying of being a
lion, she became a bear in nature as in name, and returning to her
den, growled awfully when ordered out. Her family enjoyed the fun,
and had small sympathy with her trials, but Jo came to consider it
the worse scrape of her life; for liberty had always been her dearest