I was of course familiar with Keats's Lamia, another imaginary being, the subject of magical transformation into a serpent.
My story was well advanced before Hawthorne's wonderful "Marble Faun," which might be thought to have furnished me with the hint of a mixed nature,--human, with an alien element,--was published or known to me.

So that my poor heroine found her origin, not in fable or romance, but in a physiological conception fertilized by a theological dogma.
I had the dissatisfaction of enjoying from a quiet corner a well-meant effort to dramatize "Elsie Veneer." Unfortunately, a physiological romance, as I knew beforehand, is hardly adapted for the melodramatic efforts of stage representation.

I can therefore say, with perfect truth, that I was not disappointed.

It is to the mind, and not to the senses, that such a story must appeal, and all attempts to render the character and events objective on the stage, or to make them real by artistic illustrations, are almost of necessity failures.

The story has won the attention and enjoyed the favor of a limited class of readers, and if it still continues to interest others of the same tastes and habits of thought I can ask nothing more of it.
January 23, 1883..