into trouble. He wouldn’t be able to go far enough to satisfy his masters. If anyone said the Income Tax Gollector had claws, we should say at once, « Yves, he has ; he can’t send us a letter without a nasty claws or two in it. » But as to soul he has no soul any more than he has a conscience. In these respects the species which cornes nearest to him is the publisher.
When we speak of publishers we are always carried away by the warmth of our feelings, and launch into anti-panegyrics at great length — therefore we had better stop short here and say all this is a digression.
We had intended when we took up our pen to talk about letter-writing, and since so far we have wandered from the point we will proceed to make amends by a strict attention to brevity ; and hope by carefully combining business principles with literary style, to give every satisfaction.
Letter-writing. — Our landlady, Mrs. Kilwhipple, has, we consider, a great gift for letter-writing. She is fluent, candid, artless, and absorbing. She is above grammar, and she wanders through the mazes of prose.
I do not know whether appearances now more than at other times are not deceptive. For my own part, I must own that — poetical and
