Now you see what I mean by a thorn.  Here is the case put with true female logic.  “I am poor; I am good; I am ill; I work hard; I have a sick mother and hungry brothers and sisters dependent on me.  You can help us if you will.”  And then I look at the paper, with the thousandth part of a faint hope that it may be suitable, and I find it won’t do:  and I knew it wouldn’t do:  and why is this poor lady to appeal to my pity and bring her poor little ones kneeling to my bedside, and calling for bread which I can give them if I choose?  No day passes but that argument ad misericordiam is used.  Day and night that sad voice is crying out for help.  Thrice it appealed to me yesterday.  Twice this morning it cried to me:  and I have no doubt when I go to get my hat, I shall find it with its piteous face and its pale family about it, waiting for me in the hall.  One of the immense advantages which women have over our sex is, that they actually like to read these letters.  Like letters?  O mercy on us!  Before I was an editor I did not like the postman much:—­but now!

A very common way with these petitioners is to begin with a fine flummery about the merits and eminent genius of the person whom they are addressing.  But this artifice, I state publicly, is of no avail.  When I see that kind of herb, I know the snake within it, and fling it away before it has time to sting.  Away, reptile, to the waste-paper basket, and thence to the flames!

But of these disappointed people, some take their disappointment and meekly bear it.  Some hate and hold you their enemy because you could not be their friend.  Some, furious and envious, say:  “Who is this man who refuses what I offer, and how dares he, the conceited coxcomb, to deny my merit?”

Sometimes my letters contain not mere thorns, but bludgeons.  How are two choice slips from that noble Irish oak, which has more than once supplied alpeens for this meek and unoffending skull:—­

“Theatre royal, Donnybrook.

“Sir,—­I have just finished reading the first portion of your Tale, Lovel the Widower, and am much surprised at the unwarrantable strictures you pass therein on the corps de ballet.

“I have been for more than ten years connected with the theatrical profession, and I beg to assure you that the majority of the corps de ballet are virtuous, well-conducted girls, and, consequently, that snug cottages are not taken for them in the Regent’s Park.

“I also have to inform you that theatrical managers are in the habit of speaking good English, possibly better English than authors.

“You either know nothing of the subject in question, or you assert a wilful falsehood.

“I am happy to say that the characters of the corps de ballet, as also those of actors and actresses, are superior to the snarlings of dyspeptic libellers, or the spiteful attacks and brutum fulmen of ephemeral authors.