Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1894 — A Sympathetic Woman. [ARTICLE]

A Sympathetic Woman.

Lying on Mrs. Lynn Linton’s table in her sitting-room was a large bundle of manuscripts, upon which i naturally remarked to my hostess: “What a lot of work you have there on hand! Surely that means two or three new books.” “Not one is my own. Bundles of manuscripts like these have haunted my later life. I receive large packets from men and women I have never seen and know i othing whatever about. One asks for my advice; another if I can find a publisher; a third inquires if the material is worth spinning out into a three-volume novel: a fourth lives abroad and places the manuscript in my hands to do with it exactly as I think fit, etc.” “How fearful! But what do you do with them ail? 1 “One I once returned unread, for tho writing was so bad 1 could not decipher it. But only once; the rest I have always conscientiously read through, and corrected page by page, if I have thought there was anything to bo made of them. But to many of my unknown correspondents I have had to reply sadly that the work had not sufficient merit for publication, and, as gently a< I could, suggest their leaving literature alone and trying something else." “You are very good to bot her yourself with them.” "No, not good exactly: but 1 feel very strongly the duty of the old to the young, and how the established must help the striving. And lam so sorry for tho people, and know how a little help or advice given at the. right moment may make or mar a career, and how kindly words of discouragement given also at the right moment may save many a bitter tear of disappointment in the future." —Temple Bar.