Mr.F.
was to edit it.

He was a felicitous skirmisher with a pen, and a man who could say happy things in a crisp, neat way.

Once, while editor of the Union, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent, two-column attack made upon him by a contemporary, with a single line, which, at first glance, seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous compliment--viz.: "THE LOGIC OF OUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE PEACE OF GOD,"-- and left it to the reader's memory and after-thought to invest the remark with another and "more different" meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure the rest of the Scripture--"in that it passeth understanding." He once said of a little, half-starved, wayside community that had no subsistence except what they could get by preying upon chance passengers who stopped over with them a day when traveling by the overland stage, that in their Church service they had altered the Lord's Prayer to read: "Give us this day our daily stranger!" We expected great things of the Occidental.

Of course it could not get along without an original novel, and so we made arrangements to hurl into the work the full strength of the company.

Mrs.F.was an able romancist of the ineffable school--I know no other name to apply to a school whose heroes are all dainty and all perfect.