"What a mournful glory falls upon the October woods! It seems as if a broken rain-bow were strained through a sieve of gray clouds, and sprinkled over the crisp leaves. Ochre, vermillion, dappled russet, and all rare tintings! And then the wind that rushes so gloriously through the woodlands, bearing with it a rich, earthy smell, and scattering the purple wealth, the hoarded gold of the autumnal days! Pleasant Forest, with your oaken harps! Pleasant little Town, lying quietly in sunshine and moonlight—how sad I was to leave ye! Pleasant River, that stealest up from the sea, past the fort and into the old weather-beaten seaport town—crawling lazily among the rotting piers of deserted wharves, then gliding off through the shaky bridge, squirming and curveting into a world of greenery, like a great serpent with an emerald back! And the girls! Village belles, rustic flirts—eyes, lips, shady curls, white hands, little feet, enchanting pouts—ah, me!

This rhapsodical soliloquy was interrupted one fine October morning, two days after my return from the sea-side, by a voice there was no mistaking. It was Barescythe, who startled Mrs. Muggins with the following pertinent inquiry:

"Prolific producer of sea-prodigies, is Ralph at home?"

I could not see Mrs. Muggins' face, for that good soul was standing at the foot of the stairs; but I knew her feelings were injured, and I hastened out of my room to prevent any verbal combat that might ensue.

Mrs. Muggins, (after a long silence, and with some asperity)—"What, sir?"

Barescythe, (petulantly)—"Is Ralph in, Sycorax?"

What reply the "relick" of Joshua Muggins might have made to this interrogation, is only to be imagined; for I immediately "discovered" myself, to use a theatrical phrase, and led my solemn friend from hostile ground.

"My dear Barry," said I, after greeting him cordially, "you shouldn't—"

"Shouldn't what?"

"Call Mrs. Muggins names."

"Sycorax? She deserved it. Women are Cleopatras until they are thirty, then they are old witches with broomstick propensities! Don't interrupt me. Don't speak to me."

I choked down a panegyric on Woman, for I knew that Barry was thinking of a cold, heartless piece of femininity that, years and years ago, forgot her troth to an honest man, and ran away with a moustache and twenty-four gilt buttons. I could never see why he regretted it, for Mrs. Captain Mary O'Donehugh never stopped growing till she could turn down a two hundred weight; and she looks anything but interesting, with her long file of little O'Donehughs—nascent captains and middies in the bud!

I knew that Barescythe was not in a mood to be critically just, yet, for the sake of turning his thoughts into different channels, I glanced significantly at the MS. under his arm.

"My Novel," I ventured.

"Like the man in the play," said Barescythe, "the world should ask somebody to write it down an ass!"

With which, he threw the manuscript on the table before me.

His remark was uttered with such an air of logic, that I nodded assent, for I never disagree with logicians.

"The world is wide-mouthed, long-eared, and stupid—it will probably like that affair of yours, though I doubt if the book sells."

And Barry pointed to the curled up novel on the table.

I bowed with, "I hope it will."

"The world," he continued, "that gave Milton £10 for Paradise Lost, ought surely to be in ecstacies over Daisy's Necklace."

"Barry," said I, somewhat nettled, "is it my good nature, or your lack of it, that seduces you into saying such disagreeable things?"

"Neither, Ralph, for I no more lack good nature than you possess it. But we won't quarrel. I am sore because the day of great books has gone by! Once we could boast of giant minds: we have only pigmies now."

"But let them speak, Barry. There may be some among us that are not for a day. Who foresaw in the strolling player, in the wild, thoughtless Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Dramatist of all time? Your pet Homer was a mendicant. Legions of our best poets were not acknowledged, until the brain that thought, was worn out, the hand that toiled, cold, and the lips that murmured, patient forever!

What if my poor story is stale and flat beside the chef-d'oeuvre of Sir Walter Scott's genius? Barry, there is a little bird in our New-England woods known only by its pleasant chirp; yet who would break its amber bill because the nightingales in eastern lands warble so deliciously?"

Barry laughed.

"There you come, Ralph, with your bird-conceits! You flap the wings of some thread-bare metaphor in my face, and I cannot see for the feathers! You are not a man to argue with. Poetical men never are: they make up in sentiment what they lack in sense; and very often it happens that a bit of poetry is more than a match for a piece of logic. 'No more of that, Hal, an' thou lovest me.' Your book is a miserable one. All your voluble ingenuity cannot controvert that."

Barry's better nature had slipped out of him for a moment into the sunshine, like a turtle's head; but it slipped back again, and the speech that commenced with a laugh ended with a snarl.

"It shows," he said, rumpling the manuscript with a careless hand, "a want of Art. The construction of the tale is crude: the characters are all old friends with new names—broken down stage-horses with new harnesses—and the prose throughout is uneven. How can it be otherwise, since it is only an intolerable echo of Hood, Dickens, and Charles Reade? Your want of artistic genius is shown in taking three chapters to elaborate "little Bell," who has no kind of influence in working out the plot, and who dies conveniently at Chapter III. Your imitative proclivities are prominent in the chapter headed 'A Few Specimens of Humanity.' Was ever anything more like the author of 'The Old Curiosity Shop?' Your short, jerky sentences are modeled after Reade's 'Peg Woffington,' and 'Christie Johnstone,' or any of Dumas' thefts. As to the plot, that is altogether too improbable and silly for serious criticism. And then the title, 'Daisy's Necklace'—'Betsy's Garter!'"

"Ah, Barry, this is only Fadladeen and Feramorz over again! Do you remember that after all the strictures of the eastern savant, Feramorz turned out to be not only a Poet but a Prince? I could take you to be 'Blackwood' slashing an American book, rather than a Yankee editor looking over a friend's virgin novel. You are like all critics, Barry. They ignore what might please them greatly if they had not their critical behavior on, and grow savage over that part of an author which they should speedily forget—like a dog on a country highway, that turns up his cold nose at the delicate hedge-blossoms, and growls over a decayed bone! So you find nothing to admire in my sixteen chapters?"

"Not much."

"Then say a good word for that little."

"There are some lines, Ralph, some whole paragraphs, may be, that would be very fine in a poem; but in an every-day novel they are strikingly out of place. Your jewels, (heart-jewels I suppose you call 'em,) seem to me like diamonds on the bosom of a calicoed and untidy chambermaid. That sentimental chapter with 'The Dead Hope' caption, is quite as good as your blank verse, and I would wager a copy of Griswold's 'Poets of America,' against a doubtful three-cent piece, that you wrote it in rhyme—it's not very difficult, you know, to turn your poetry into prose. You needn't stare. In a word, your book is as tame as a sick kitten—I hate kittens: there's something diabolical in a yellow cat!"

I nipped a smile in the bud, and said, quietly:

"I intended to write a tame, simple domestic story. The facts are garnered from my own experience, and—"

"Garnered from your maternal grandparent, Ralph! Very much I believe it. Very much anybody will. It's a wonder to me that you didn't call the book 'Heart-life by an Anatomy'!"

"I will acknowledge, Barescythe, that I have not done my best in this affair. 'Yet consider,' as Fabricio says in the play, ''twas done at a sitting: a single sitting, by all the saints! I will do better when I have those pistoles, and may use time.' Local tales of this school have been popular. I wrote mine to sell."

"But it won't."

"Why?"

"Let's see. How many 'sunsets' have you in the book?"

"Not many, I think."

"That was an oversight. There should be one at the end of each chapter—twenty 'sunsets' at least. Then you have no seduction."

"A seduction?" horrified.

"Of course. What modern novel is complete without one? It gives a spicy flavor to the story. People of propriety like it. Prim ladies of an uncertain age always 'dote' on the gallant, gay Lothario, and wish that he wasn't so very wicked!"

And Barry raised his eye-brows, and broke out in such a clear, bell-like, canorous laugh—so contagious in its merriment, that I joined him; and I fancied I heard Mrs. Muggins beating a hasty retreat down the front stairs. It seems improbable to me that Mrs. Muggins had been listening at the key-hole of my door—respectable Mrs. Muggins.

"Then, sir," said Barry, re-assuming his mock-serious air, "there should be a dreadful duel, in which the hero is shot in his hyacinthine curls, falls mortally wounded, dripping all over with gory blood, and is borne to his ladye-love on a shutter! You have none of these fine points. Then the names of your characters are absurdly commonplace. Mortimer Walters should be Montaldo St. Clare: Daisy Snarle, (how plebeian!) should be Gertrude Flemming: John Flint, Clarence Lester, and so on to the end of the text. How Mrs. Mac Elegant will turn up her celestial nose at a book written all about common people!"

"Mrs. Mac Elegant be shot!" I exclaimed. I used to be sweet on Mrs. Mac Elegant, and Barescythe has a disagreeable way of referring to that delicate fact. "It was not for such as she I wrote. I sought to touch that finer pulse of humanity which throbs the wide world over. The sequel will prove whether or not I have failed."

Barry laughed at my ill-concealed chagrin.

"Barry," said I, carelessly, meditating a bit of revenge, and unfolding at the same time a copy of the 'Morning Glory,' "did you write the book criticisms in to-day's paper?"

"Yes," returned Barry, coloring slightly.

"They are very fine."

Barry's blood went up to his forehead.

"So consistent," I continued, "with what you have been saying. I have neither read 'The Scavenger's Daughter,' nor 'The Life of Obadiah Zecariah Jinkings;' but, judging from the opinion here expressed, I take them to be immortal works. I could never be led to think so by reading the extracts you have made from the volumes, for the prose is badly constructed. Indeed, Barry, here's a sentence which lacks a personal pronoun and a verb."

"I see what you are aiming at," replied Barescythe, sharply. "You twit me with praising these books so extravagantly. I grant you that worse trash was never in type, (Daisy is not printed yet, you know,) but will you allow me to ask you a question?"

"Si usted gusta, my dear fellow."

"Do you think that Gabriel Ravel, at Niblo's, turns spasmodic summersets on a chalked rope for the sake of any peculiar pleasure derived therefrom?"

"Why, Barry, I can scarcely imagine anything more unpleasant than to be turned upside down, fifteen feet from maternal earth, with an undeniable chance of breaking one's neck, on a four-inch rope. But why do you ask?"

"M. Ravel distorts himself for a salary, and no questions asked. I do the same. I throw literary summersets for a golden consideration. It is a very simple arrangement"—here Barescythe drew a diagram on the palm of his hand—"Messrs. Printem & Sellem (my thumb) give us, 'The Morning Glory,' (my forefinger) costly advertisements, and I, Barescythe, (the little finger) am expected to laud all the books they publish."

Out of respect to Barescythe, I restrained my laughter.

He went on, with a ruthful face:

"Here is 'The Life of Jinkings'—the life of a puppy!—an individual of whom nobody ever heard till now, a very clever, harmless, good man in his way, no doubt,—the big gun of a little village, but no more worthy of a biography than a printer's devil!"

With which words, Barescythe hit an imaginary Mr. Jinkings in the stomach with evident satisfaction.

"Yet I am called upon to tell the world that this individual, this what do you call him?—Jinkings—is one of the luminaries of the age, a mental Hercules, a new Prometheus—the clown! Why on earth did his friends want to resurrectionize the insipid incidents of this man's milk-and-water existence! If he made a speech on the introduction of a 'Town-pump,' or delivered an essay at the 'Bell Tavern'—it was very kind of him, to be sure: but why not bury his bad English with him in the country church-yard? I wish they had, for I am expected to say that ten thousand copies of the 'work' have been sold, when I know that only five hundred were printed; or else Messrs. Printem & Sellem withdraw their advertisements, in which case my occupation's gone! And this 'Scavenger's Daughter'—a book written by a sentimental schoolgirl, and smelling of bread-and-butter—see how I have plastered it all over with panegyric!"

"And so, Barry," I said, with some malice, "you wantingly abuse my book, because I cannot injure you pecuniarily."

"Perhaps I do," growled Barescythe. "It is a relief to say an honest thing now and then; but wait, Ralph, till I start The Weekly Critique, then look out for honest, slashing criticism. No longer hedged in by the interests and timidity of 'the proprietors,' I shall handle books for themselves, and not their advertisements—

"What a comment is this on American criticism! O, Barry, it is such men as you, with fine taste and fine talent, who bring literature into disrepute. Your genius gives you responsible places in the world of letters, and how you wrong the trust!"

"Thank you," returned Barescythe, coldly, "you blend flattery and insult so ingeniously, that I hesitate whether to give you the assurance of my distinguished consideration, or knock you down."

"Either you please, Barry. I have spoken quite as honestly, if not so bluntly as you; and I regret that I have so little to say in favor of your inconsistent criticism. I am sorry you dislike my novel, but—"

I looked toward the chair in which Barescythe had been sitting.

He was gone.

I was not surprised, for Barry does few things "after the manner of men," and a ceremonious departure is something he never dreams of. I sat and thought of what had been said. I wondered if we were the dregs of time, the worthless leaves of trees that had borne their fruit—if there were none among us,

And lastly, I wondered if any of our city papers had such a critical appendage as T. J. Barescythe.

?

It is pleasant to have your friend Mr. Smith pat you patronisingly on the back, and say, "My dear fellow, when is your book coming out?"

Of course, you send Mrs. Smith a copy after that—and all Mrs. Smith's relations.

"Daisy's Necklace" is nearly ready. The following advertisement, which I cut from "The Evening Looking Glass" of last Thursday, illustrates the manner in which "my publishers," Messrs. Printem & Sellem, make their literary announcements:

DAISY'S NECKLACE,

And what came of it

PRINTEM & SELLEM,

Publishers."

That was rather modest and pleasant; but it is pleasanter than all to have an early copy of your book placed on the breakfast-table, unexpectedly, some sunshiny morning—to behold, for the first time, the darling of your meditation in a suit of embossed muslin. How your heart turns over—if you are not used to the thing. How you make pauses between your coffee and muffins, to admire the clear typography, the luxurious paper, the gold letters on the back!

Messrs. Printem & Sellem sent me two out-of-town papers, containing notices of "Daisy." These notices were solicited by advance copies of the work, for the purpose of being used in the publication advertisement. It is curious to remark how great minds will differ.

[From the Blundertown Journal.]

"NEW PUBLICATIONS.

"Daisy's Necklace, and what came
of it. New-York: Printem and
Sellem.

This production is an emanation
from the culminating mind of glorious
genius! Nothing like it has been produced
in this century. It possesses all
the fine elements of Dickens' novels,
without any of their numerous defects.
Its scope, its pathos, and wit, is[B]
beyond all praise. Our Britannic brethren
will no longer ask, 'Who reads
an American book?' For we can reply,
'The World!'

"We learn, from good authority, that
the publishers have received orders for
twenty thousand copies of the work, in
advance of its publication. We have no
doubt of it; for 'Daisy's Necklace' will
shed new lustre on the name of American
Literature! Envious authors will
abuse the work. As the immortal Goethe
says, 'De gustibus non est disputandum!
' Our rush of advertisements prevents
us from making voluminous
extracts from the novel; this, however,
would be useless, as everybody will
read it for themselves.

"Orders addressed to Higgins & Co.,
of this town, will be promptly filled."

I should take the editor of the "Blundertown Journal" to be a man of cultured taste, appreciative and discriminating. The second review was not quite so "favorable," and can scarcely be called "a first-rate notice."

"Daisy's Necklace" is the silly
title of an absurd novel about to be
issued by Printem & Sellem, of
New-York. From the fact that the author's
name is withheld from the title-page,
we infer that he had some friends—
some few who were not wholly willing
that he should make a donkey of
himself. We have read a great deal of
trash in our day; but 'Daisy's Necklace'
is the king of all vapid novels,
—sentimental in sentiment, flaccid in
fiction, and entirely intolerable from
beginning to end. The first forty pages
put us to sleep. We advise all druggists
to keep the book for sale,—as an
anodyne.

"The binding is good, and that is
all the praise we can give so contemptible
an abortion. A reading public
that tolerates a novel like this, must be
made up of very good-natured persons—
assinine in temperament, and mentally
obtuse.

"This 'work,' we presume, is written
by that much-abused and prolific myth
—'a young gentleman of this city,'
distinguished, of course. We believe
that he writes all of Printem & Sellem's
books. At all events, those enterprising
gentlemen always have 'a startling
novel' in press, from his immortal
pen. What a long string of sins
these gentlemen have to answer for!
What a commotion there would be
among the shelves of their book-store,
if dead authors could come back and
reclaim stolen property! If the shade
of Lindley Murray could stalk among them!

"For our part, we had rather see
the Hudson River Railroad's list of
'dead and wounded,' than Printem &
Sellem's list of 'Popular Publications!'
But it is consoling to know that books
like 'Daisy's Necklace,' in spite of
'purchased puffery,' find their level at last
as linings for portmanteaus and third-rate
trunks. We shall make cigar-lighters
of our copy, and thank the stars
that we were not born a book-making
genius!"

Not a line quoted to prove the justice of the unstrained censure! I could not account for the malignant personality of this critique, until Barry informed me that my publishers never advertised their books in the columns of the "Frogpond Gazette." This, of course, explained it. I only wish I had the stubborn editor of the "Frogpond" at arm's length, I would try the consistency of his ears.

I was somewhat astonished, the next day, to find how ingeniously Messrs. Printem & Sellem made the adverse criticism subservient to their interests.

My lucubration was out.

The "Post" said so; the "Morning Rabid" said it; the "Evening Looking-Glass" said it; and a host of small fry echoed the important fact. I unfolded "The Rabid," and beheld the following advertisement:

THE 'FROGPOND GAZETTE,'
(high authority), in a long review
of this work says: 'Daisy's Necklace
is the King of all Novels.'
'The Blundertown Journal' (also
high authority) remarks:
'This Book is an emanation from the
culminating mind of glorious genius!'
'Nothing like it has been produced
in this century!'
'It has all the fine elements of
Dickens' Novels, without any of their
numerous defects!'
Our first edition (20,000 copies) is
exhausted, and we beg our friends to
have patience for a few days.
WANTED, 4,000 Agents to sell the
above work!!

Printem & Sellem,

Publishers."

"Four thousand agents!" quoth Barry, looking over my shoulder; "I rather think it would take forty thousand to sell an edition of 'Daisy!'"

I laughed at my irate friend, and, igniting a fresh regalia, crossed my feet on the mantel-piece, and remarked, composedly,

"Now for the Critics!"

The Greek of my book-making genius, Ralph—— Esq., seems decidedly rusty. He has evidently given his lexicon an icy shoulder. Will the intellectual and erudite reader substitute kyrie eleyson for kyrie elyson on page 131?