distinguished and somewhat more joyous than the rest.

"How do you do, Mr. Linden?" said a tall and (though somewhat passe)
very handsome woman, blazing with diamonds; "are you just come?"

And, here, by the way, I cannot resist pausing to observe that a
friend of mine, meditating a novel, submitted a part of the manuscript
to a friendly publisher. "Sir," said the bookseller, "your book is
very clever, but it wants dialogue."

"Dialogue!" cried my friend: "you mistake; it is all dialogue."

"Ay, sir, but not what we call dialogue; we want a little conversation
in fashionable life,--a little elegant chit-chat or so: and, as you
must have seen so much of the beau monde, you could do it to the life:
we must have something light and witty and entertaining."

"Light, witty, and entertaining!" said our poor friend; "and how the
deuce, then, is it to be like conversation in 'fashionable life'?
When the very best conversation one can get is so insufferably dull,
how do you think people will be amused by reading a copy of the very
worst?"

"They are amused, sir," said the publisher; "and works of this kind
sell!"

"I am convinced," said my friend; for he was a man of a placid temper:
he took the hint, and his book did sell!

Now this anecdote rushed into my mind after the penning of the little