Weighted with "An Edinburgh Eleven" it would rest very comfortably in the mill dam, but the publishers have reasons for its inclusion; among them, I suspect, is a well-grounded fear that if I once began to hack and hew, I should not stop until I had reduced the edition to two volumes.

This juvenile effort is a field of prickles into which none may be advised to penetrate--I made the attempt lately in cold blood and came back shuddering, but I had read enough to have the profoundest reason for declining to tell what the book is about.

And yet I have a sentimental interest in "Better Dead," for it was my first--published when I had small hope of getting any one to accept the Scotch--and there was a week when I loved to carry it in my pocket and did not think it dead weight.

Once I almost saw it find a purchaser.

She was a pretty girl and it lay on a bookstall, and she read some pages and smiled, and then retired, and came back and began another chapter.