The next desires to be informed how much of the story is autobiography, and requires the regiment and company in which my brother served.
And now I am haughtily taken to task by some unknown nature for allowing my heroine to be too much attached to her brother. I am told that this is impious; that only our Maker should receive such adoring affection as poor Mary offered to dead Roy.
Having recovered from this inconceivable slap in the face, I go bravely on. I open the covers of a pamphlet as green as Erin, entitled, "Antidote to the Gates Ajar;" consider myself as the poisoner of the innocent and reverent mind, and learn what I may from this lesson in toxicology.
There was always a certain share of abuse in these outpourings from strangers; it was relatively small, but it was enough to save my spirits, by the humor of it, or they would have been crushed with the weight of the great majority.
I remember the editor of a large Western paper, who enclosed a clipping from his last review for my perusal. It treated, not of "The Gates Ajar" just then, but of a magazine story in "Harper's," the "Century," or wherever. The story was told in the first person fictitious, and began after this fashion:
"I am an old maid of fifty-six, and have spent most of my life in boarding-houses." (The writer was, be it said, at that time, scarcely twenty-two.)
"Miss Phelps says of herself," observed this oracle, "that she is fifty-six years old; and we think she is old enough to know better than to write such a story as this."
At a summer place where I was in the early fervors of the art of making a home, a citizen was once introduced to me at his own request. I have forgotten his name, but remember having been told that he was "prominent." He was big, red, and loud, and he planted himself with the air of a man about to demolish his deadliest foe.
"So you are Miss Phelps. Well, I've wanted to meet you. I read a piece you wrote in a magazine. It was about Our Town. It did not please Me."
I bowed with the interrogatory air which seemed to be expected of me. Being just then very much in love with that very lovable place, I was puzzled with this accusation, and quite unable to recall, out of the warm flattery which I had heaped upon the town in cool print, any visible cause of offence.