A PLEA FOR THE NOM DE PLUME.

Once upon a time there lived a good little girl whom everybody loved. She had six aunts, four uncles, and twenty-seven cousins, besides a brother and two sisters. All these relatives, of course, especially loved her, for that was only natural. And they were all very glad, indeed, to help her in every way possible.

She was a bright little thing as well as good, and by and by she thought she would see whether any of the papers and magazines cared to know of the things she thought, and she wrote a morsel of an article and timidly sent it off.

But before she sent it to the editor she read it to her sisters, each of whom had some slight correction to make; and she showed it to Aunt Emma, who was quite of a literary turn of mind, and Aunt Emma read it to her daughter Mabel, who had just left college.

These ladies so marked up the carefully written manuscript that the good little girl had to copy it all before it was fit to be sent.

After it had been gone eight days the article was returned. This made the little girl very sad, and she wept.

The other five aunts, and the uncles, and all the cousins were by this time interested, and they comforted her with many words, and censured her with a great many more, and gave her a great deal of good advice. But the little girl finally got so confused by the many conflicting opinions offered that she hardly knew what to do or say. One moment she would think she would write this and another that, and some of the time she declared that she would never write another line at all.

But one day a very pretty idea came into her mind all at once, and she did think it too sweet to be lost. So she wrote it down just as it came to her, and sent it away, and never told a soul a word about it.

By and by it was printed, and how happy the little girl was! She told nobody but her parents and her sisters this time, but all her friends saw her name in the paper, and they came running to her to talk about it.

"I saw your name in the paper," said Cousin Ada.

"Did you?" said the good little girl, pleasantly.

"Yes; an' Bert an' I know who you meant by 'The Old Bad Man.'"

"But I didn't mean anybody," explained she; "that was only a little story."

"Oh, we know you did. Mamma says it isn't a nice story at all, an' Mabelle says, 'Ugh!'"

It was no wonder that the little girl felt hurt at these words. And it was queer, but every time that any of the friends had any fault to find, or any help to give her, which was the same thing, of course, they began it by saying, "I saw your name in the paper."

At last the good little girl could endure it no longer, and she said to herself, "They sha'n't see my name in the paper any more"; and she sat down on the green grass and thought of a nice new name that pleased her, and she called herself by that name always when she wrote for the papers. And as she never got famous so that she wanted to tell people what her pen-name was, her friends never found it out, and she lived and died in peace.

Hæc fabula docet—Don't be made to feel it's cowardly to use a nom de plume if you want to. It isn't likely to do any harm, and it may save you lots of bother.

Persis E. Darrow. Wentworth, N. H.