changed to sparkling champagne, and at the very height of its
effervescence I wrote a story. The happy thought that then
struck me for a tale was of a very peculiar character, and it
interested me so much that I went to work at it with great
delight and enthusiasm, and finished it in a comparatively short
time. The title of the story was "His Wife's Deceased Sister,"
and when I read it to Hypatia she was delighted with it, and at
times was so affected by its pathos that her uncontrollable
emotion caused a sympathetic dimness in my eyes which
prevented my seeing the words I had written. When the reading
was ended and my wife had dried her eyes, she turned to me and
said, "This story will make your fortune. There has been nothing
so pathetic since Lamartine's `History of a Servant Girl.'"

As soon as possible the next day I sent my story to the
editor of the periodical for which I wrote most frequently, and
in which my best productions generally appeared. In a few days I
had a letter from the editor, in which he praised my story as he
had never before praised anything from my pen. It had interested
and charmed, he said, not only himself, but all his associates in
the office. Even old Gibson, who never cared to read anything
until it was in proof, and who never praised anything which had
not a joke in it, was induced by the example of the others to
read this manuscript, and shed, as he asserted, the first tears
that had come from his eyes since his final paternal castigation
some forty years before. The story would appear, the editor
assured me, as soon as he could possibly find room for it.

If anything could make our skies more genial, our flowers
brighter, and the flavor of our fruit and cigars more delicious,