Would-be Novelist (writes). Even as he read the letter, De Brooke’s face blanched. The dreaded blow had fallen! The estate would never be his—and he must be content with a mere existence on a paltry nine hundred a year.
LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET
A WHITCOMB RILEY STORY
On the way to the office of his publishers one crisp autumn morning, Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, the celebrated “Hoosier” poet of America, who is almost as well known in England, met an unusually large number of acquaintances who commented conventionally upon the fine weather. This unremitting applause amused him. When greeted at the office with “Nice day, Mr. Riley,” he smiled broadly.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, I’ve heard it very highly spoken of.”
MARK TWAIN AND THE KEY
“Once when I was going out to visit some friends,” Mark Twain is alleged to have said, in relating this one of the innumerable “yarns” fathered on him, “I told George, my negro servant, to lock the house and put the key under a certain stone near the steps. He agreed to do so.
“It was late at night when I returned. I went to the stone under which the key was supposed to have been hidden. It was gone. I hunted around the premises for about fifteen minutes, but still no key.
“Finally I went to George’s house—he lived outside—and rapped, vigorously upon the door. A black head, which I had no difficulty in recognizing as George’s, popped out of an upstairs window.