Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/36

at the eighteenth trial trip; but my pluck gave out at four experiences with prose and two with poetry, and I am done with a literary career for this world.

There is a fifth method of self-preservation. You can become your own author, publisher, printer, binder, reader, critic, and public; and a common blank-book, with a padlock if you choose, is competent to carry your soul and the secrets thereof, if you have any, or to convince you that you have some, if you have n't, which is substantially the same thing. I call mine "The Accepted Manuscript."

It is a week to-night since I added anything to the Accepted Manuscript, and I 've nothing but copies of a couple of humiliating notes to fill the gap. Since that evening when I went out into the tree-house in the storm, the secretary has not seen fit to speak to me at all. If I meet him at the door, he lifts his hat, and if I go into the library while he is reading to Father, he lifts his eyes, and their expression is positively exasperating. I never denied that Mr. Herwin was a handsome man, and melancholy becomes him, I 'm bound to admit. But he has that remote air, as if I had been caught stabbing him, and nobody knew it but himself and me, and he would n't tell of me, lest I be held up to human