So I said to myself,I must have some new characters.I had no trouble with young characters;they are all pretty much alike,--dark-haired or light-haired,with the outfits belonging to their complexion,respectively.I had an old great-aunt,who was a tip-top eccentric.I had never seen anything just like her in books.So Isaid,I will have you,old lady,in one of my stories;and,sure enough,I fitted her out with a first-rate odd-sounding name,which Igot from the directory,and sent her forth to the world,disguised,as I supposed,beyond the possibility of recognition.The book sold well,and the eccentric personage was voted a novelty.A few weeks after it was published a lawyer called upon me,as the agent of the person in the directory,whose family name I had used,as he maintained,to his and all his relatives'great damage,wrong,loss,grief,shame,and irreparable injury,for which the sum of blank thousand dollars would be a modest compensation.The story made the book sell,but not enough to pay blank thousand dollars.In the mean time a cousin of mine had sniffed out the resemblance between the character in my book and our great-aunt.We were rivals in her good graces.'Cousin Pansie'spoke to her of my book and the trouble it was bringing on me,--she was so sorry about it!She liked my story,--only those personalities,you know.'What personalities?'says old granny-aunt.'Why,auntie,dear,they do say that he has brought in everybody we know,--did n't anybody tell you about--well,--I suppose you ought to know it,--did n't anybody tell you you were made fun of in that novel?'Somebody--no matter who--happened to hear all this,and told me.She said granny-aunt's withered old face had two red spots come to it,as if she had been painting her cheeks from a pink saucer.No,she said,not a pink saucer,but as if they were two coals of fire.She sent out and got the book,and made her (the somebody that I was speaking of)read it to her.When she had heard as much as she could stand,--for 'Cousin Pansie'explained passages to her,--explained,you know,--she sent for her lawyer,and that same somebody had to be a witness to a new will she had drawn up.It was not to my advantage.'Cousin Pansie'got the corner lot where the grocery is,and pretty much everything else.The old woman left me a legacy.What do you think it was?An old set of my own books,that looked as if it had been bought out of a bankrupt circulating library.
"After that I grew more careful.I studied my disguises much more diligently.But after all,what could I do?Here I was,writing stories for my living and my reputation.I made a pretty sum enough,and worked hard enough to earn it.No tale,no money.Then every story that went from my workshop had to come up to the standard of my reputation,and there was a set of critics,--there is a set of critics now and everywhere,--that watch as narrowly for the decline of a man's reputation as ever a village half drowned out by an inundation watched for the falling of the waters.The fame I had won,such as it was,seemed to attend me,--not going before me in the shape of a woman with a trumpet,but rather following me like one of Actaeon's hounds,his throat open,ready to pull me down and tear me.
What a fierce enemy is that which bays behind us in the voice of our proudest bygone achievement!
"But,as I said above,what could I do?I must write novels,and Imust have characters.'Then why not invent them?'asks some novice.
Oh,yes!Invent them!You can invent a human being that in certain aspects of humanity will answer every purpose for which your invention was intended.A basket of straw,an old coat and pair of breeches,a hat which has been soaked,sat upon,stuffed a broken window,and had a brood of chickens raised in it,--these elements,duly adjusted to each other,will represent humanity so truthfully that the crows will avoid the cornfield when your scarecrow displays his personality.Do you think you can make your heroes and heroines,--nay,even your scrappy supernumeraries,--out of refuse material,as you made your scarecrow?You can't do it.You must study living people and reproduce them.And whom do you know so well as your friends?You will show up your friends,then,one after another.When your friends give out,who is left for you?Why,nobody but your own family,of course.When you have used up your family,there is nothing left for you but to write your autobiography.
"After my experience with my grand-aunt,I be came more cautious,very naturally.I kept traits of character,but I mixed ages as well as ***es.In this way I continued to use up a large amount of material,which looked as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to meddle with.Who would have expected to meet my maternal uncle in the guise of a schoolboy?Yet I managed to decant his characteristics as nicely as the old gentleman would have decanted a bottle of Juno Madeira through that long siphon which he always used when the most sacred vintages were summoned from their crypts to render an account of themselves on his hospitable board.It was a nice business,I confess,but I did it,and I drink cheerfully to that good uncle's memory in a glass of wine from his own cellar,which,with many other more important tokens of his good will,I call my own since his lamented demise.
"I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a course of cousins.I had enough of them to furnish out a whole gallery of portraits.There was cousin 'Creeshy,'as we called her;Lucretia,more correctly.She was a cripple.Her left lower limb had had something happen to it,and she walked with a crutch.Her patience under her trial was very pathetic and picturesque,so to speak,--I mean adapted to the tender parts of a story;nothing could work up better in a melting paragraph.But I could not,of course,describe her particular infirmity;that would point her out at once.
