'

     You, who are so well known, will have no difficulty in getting the editor of the Nineteenth Century, or the Quarterly Review, or Bow Bells, to accept my little contribution. I shall be glad to hear what remuneration I am to expect, and cheques may be forwarded to

    '

     Yours very truly,

    '

     Mary Martin

    .

    'P.S.—

     The mummy case is very valuable. Please deposit it at the Old Bank, in the High, where it will represent my balance.

    'M. M.'

   Now I get letters like this (not usually escorted by a mummy case) about thrice a day, and a pretty sum it costs me in stamps to send back the rubbish to the amateur authors. But how could I send back a manuscript to a lady already on her way to Treasure Island?

   Here, perhaps, I should explain how Mary Martin, as she signed herself, came to choose

    me

   for her literary agent. To be sure, total strangers are always sending me their manuscripts, but Mrs. Martin had actually been introduced to me years before.

   I was staying, as it happened, at one of our university towns, which I shall call Oxford, for short—not that that was

    really

   its name. Walking one day with a niece, a scholar of Lady Betty's Hall, we chanced to meet in the High two rather remarkable persons. One of them was the very prettiest girl I ever saw in my life. Her noble frame marked her as the victor over Girton at lawn-tennis; while her

    pince-nez

   indicated the student. She reminded me, in the grace of her movements, of the 

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