“Oblige a lady.” She is not the first, or the only lady, who has tried to be “obliged,” and obliging, in this way. Dear creatures! how they love me! There was Miss Moses, proper Miss Moses, who had been for a year or more writing for the Scribetown Gazette, when I commenced. How delighted she was at my advent—how pleased she was with my articles—how many things she said about me, personally and literarily, to the editor of the Gazette—what an interest she took in my progress. She never tried to keep my articles out of the paper, (benevolent soul!) “lest they should injure its reputation”—not she; she never, when looking over the exchanges, hid away those in which my articles were copied, and commended—not she, she never, when she found one containing a personal attack on me (written at her own suggestion), marked it with a double row of ink marks, and laid it in a conspicuous place on the editor’s table—not she. She liked my articles—liked them so well, that, on several occasions, she appropriated whole sentences and And there was Miss Fox, who “never could see any thing to like in Fanny Fern’s articles,” who knew her to have come from a family, “who always fizzled out”—(on this point this deponent saith nothing)—but who, when she (Miss Fox) had occasion to write a newspaper story, got some kind friend to say in print, “that the story by Rosa, was probably written by Fanny Fern.” Sweet Miss Fox! Then there was Miss Briar, who “wondered if Mr. Bonner, of the New York Ledger, gave Fanny Fern, who had never been out of sight of America, $100 a column for her stupid trash, what he would give her, Miss Briar, who had crossed the big pond, when she touched pen to paper! Fanny Fern, indeed! Humph!” Lovely creatures! I adore the whole sex. I always prefer hotels, ferry boats, and omnibusses, where they predominate, and abound; how courteous they are to each other, in case of a squeeze! Lord bless ’em! How truly Burns says: |