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A Heroine in a Fix.

I used to know the late G. P. R. James, whose novels at one time enjoyed a very large circulation. One day I called upon him, as we had agreed to go out somewhere together. I found him dolefully seated over a manuscript. He was not writing, but he was gazing at it with melancholy despair. I thought he was ill, and asked him whether this was the case. No, he said, he was physically well. What, then, was the matter with him? I anxiously inquired. 'It is my heroine,' he answered; 'I have got her in a fix that I can not extricate her properly.' 'Then let her be improper, without a slight violation of the rules of propriety, and don't let us be late for the train,' I thoughtlessly said. 'My dear friend,' he replied, 'do you want to ruin me? Are you not aware that I live by never allowing my heroines to do anything to which the most stringent moralist might object? If once the slightest doubt were raised about my novels being sound reading for the most innocent of school-room girls my occupation would be gone.' And so we missed the train, but the heroine emerged from the pages of the novel a model of all that a heroine ought to do under difficult circumstances.—London Truth.