. . I recollect, when
I was a child, getting hold of some antiquated volumes, and reading
them by stealth with the most exquisite pleasure. You give a correct
description of the patient Grisels of those days. My aunt was one of
them; and to this day she thinks the tales of the 'Ladies' Magazine'
infinitely superior to any trash of modern literature. So do I; for I
read them in childhood, and childhood has a very strong faculty of
admiration, but a very weak one of criticism . . . I am pleased that
you cannot quite decide whether I am an attorney's clerk or a novel-
reading dress-maker. I will not help you at all in the discovery; and
as to my handwriting, or the ladylike touches in my style and imagery,
you must not draw any conclusion from that--I may employ an
amanuensis. Seriously, sir, I am very much obliged to you for your
kind and candid letter. I almost wonder you took the trouble to read
and notice the novelette of an anonymous scribe, who had not even the
manners to tell you whether he was a man or a woman, or whether his
'C. T.' meant Charles Timms or Charlotte Tomkins."
There are two or three things noticeable in the letter from which these
extracts are taken. The first is the initials with which she had
evidently signed the former one to which she alludes.
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