"Ladies?" the novelist asked.
"Don't I say that has nothing to do with it? If you wish to grip the reader's attention you must let yourself go, whether you're a gentleman or a lady. Of course," she relented, "your book's very idyllic, and delightful, and all that; but," she resumed, severely, "do you think an honest critic could say there was not a dull page in it from cover to cover?"
The novelist sighed. "I'm sure I don't know. They seem to say it—in the passages quoted in the advertisements—of all the books published. Except mine," he added, sadly.
"Well, we will pass that point," his great-niece relented again. "I didn't intend to wound your feelings, uncle."
"Oh, you haven't. I suppose I am a little too easy-going at times."
"Yes, that is it. One can't say dull; but too easy-going. No faithful critic could begin a notice of your book with such a passage as: 'Have you read it? No? Then hop, skip, and jump, and get it. Don't wait to find your hat or drink your coffee. March! It's going like the wind, and you must kite if you want one of the first edition of fifty thousand!' Now that," his great-niece ended, fondly, "is what I should like every critic to say of your book, uncle."
The Veteran Novelist reflected for a moment. Then he said, more spiritedly, "I don't believe I should, my dear."
"Then you must; that's all. But that's a small thing. What I really wonder at is that, with all your experience, you are not more of a stylist."
"Stylist?"
"Yes. I don't believe there's an epigram in your book from beginning to end. That's the reason the critics don't quote any brilliant sentences from it, and the publishers can't advertise it properly. It makes me mad to find the girls repeating other authors' sayings, and I never catch a word from a book of yours, though you've been writing more than a century."