teaching good English, loved it wisely and too well. I think Uncle
Rilas would have held Uncle John up to me as an example,--a scarecrow,
you might say,--if it hadn't been for the fact that he loved him in
spite of his English. He must have loved me in spite of mine.

My mother felt in her heart that I ought to be a doctor or a preacher,
but she wasn't mean: she was positive I could succeed as a writer if
I set my mind to it. She was also sure that I could be President of
the United States or perhaps even a Bishop. We were Episcopalian.

When I was twenty-seven my first short story appeared in a magazine
of considerable weight, due to its advertising pages, but my Uncle
Rilas didn't read it until I had convinced him that the honorarium
amounted to three hundred dollars. Even then I was obliged to promise
him a glimpse of the check when I got it. Somewhat belated, it came
in the course of three or four months with a rather tart letter in
which I was given to understand that it wasn't quite the thing to
pester a great publishing house with queries of the kind I had been
so persistent in propounding. But at last Uncle Rilas saw the check
and was properly impressed. He took back what he said about the
washerwoman, but gave me a little further advice concerning the
stocking.

In course of time my first novel appeared. It was a love story. Uncle
Rilas read the first five chapters and then skipped over to the last
page. Then he began it all over again and sat up nearly all night to
finish it. The next day he called it "trash" but invited me to have
luncheon with him at the Metropolitan Club, and rather noisily
introduced me to a few old cronies of his, who were not sufficiently
interested in me to enquire what my name was--a trifling detail he had