unseen,—­who will carry air-guns in the shape of canes, and hang round the place where you get your provisions, and practise with long-range rifles out in the lonely fields,—­rifles that crack no louder than a parlor-pistol, but spit a bit of lead out of their mouths half a mile and more, so that you wait as you do for the sound of the man’s axe who is chopping on the other side of the river, to see the fellow you have “saved” clap his hand to his breast and stagger over.  It makes me nervous to think of such things.  I don’t want to be suspicious of every queer taste in my coffee, and to shiver if I see a little powdered white sugar on the upper crust of my pastry.  I don’t want, every time I hear a door bang, to think it is a ragged slug from an unseen gun-barrel.

If Dick V——­ was not killed on the Pampas, as they have always said he was, I should never sleep easy after telling my story.  For such a fellow as he was would certainly see through all the disguises I could cover up a real-life story with, and then——.  He has learned the use of the lasso too well for me to want to trust my neck anywhere within a rod of him, if there were light enough for him to see, and nothing between us, and nobody near.

And besides, there were a good many opinions handled by some of these people I should have to talk about.  Now, of course, a magazine like the Oceanic is no place for opinions.  Look out for your Mormon subscribers, if you question the propriety of Solomon’s domestic arrangements!  And if you say one word that touches the Sandemanians, be sure their whole press will be down on you; for, as Sandemanianism is the undoubted and absolutely true religion, it follows, of course, that it is as sore as a scalded finger, and must be handled like a broken bone.

Add to this that I have always had the greatest objection to writing anything which those who were not acquainted with the facts might call a romance or a tale. We think very ill of a man who offers us as a truth some single statement which we find he knew to be false.  Now what can we think of a man who tells three volumes, or even one, full of just such lies?  Of course the prima-facie aspect of the case is, that he is guilty of the most monstrous impertinence; and, in point of fact, I confess the greatest disgust towards any person of whom I hear the assertion that he has written a story, unless I hear something more than that.  He is bound to show extenuating or justifying circumstances, as much as the man who writes what he calls “poems.”  For, as the world is full of real histories, and every day in every great city begins and ends a score or half a dozen score of tragic dramas, it is a huge piece of assumption to undertake to make one out of one’s own head.  A man takes refuge under your porch in a rain-storm, and you offer him the use of your shower-bath!