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 permissible but laudable, as a means of impressing truth."

Mrs. Hall was a very rapid writer. One of her Irish sketches, "We'll See About It," was written between the morning and evening of a summer day. Mr. S. C. Hall tells one story which almost seems incredible. He and his wife were travelling from Liverpool to London, and to beguile the journey he had bought a number of magazines and papers. Mrs. Hall began to read one of them with great attention, then put it into her husband's hand saying, "Read that, it's a capital Irish story." He glanced at it and said, "Well, that's modest, for it's your own!" She had read it through without the slightest idea that she had written it. Mr. Hall accounts for this extraordinary forgetfulness by adding that whatever she wrote, she rarely read after it was written, leaving it entirely to him to prepare it for press, revise the proofs, etc., and never questioned his judgment as to any erasures or omissions he might consider necessary to make.

An Irish cook who lived with the Halls in London was remarkably silent, seldom saying more than "yes" or "no." At length, she gave warning, and obstinately refused to say what was the cause of her leaving. She had no fault to find with the place, but she wished to go. On being pressed for the reason, she suddenly turned round and