University of Virginia Library

Sir—I have just finished the perusal of your novel, “The Dancing
Feather,” and must say it has greatly interested me, and especially my aunt,
to whom I read it aloud. But we are both equally at fault about one of
your chief characters; and taking cover under an anonymous signature, I
have resolved to write to you to know all about it. The difficulty (and
who can bear a mystery, especially at the end of a novel, where all
mysteries ought to be cleared up?) I want to have explained is this:—
Aunt says the buccanneer Captain was Morris Græme, and I am supported
by two cousins of mine in the opinion that it was Carleton; and I think I
shall show you, Mr. Author, that you have made a mistake; for the following
conversation occurs in the fifth chapter between Hayward and Morris
Græme:

` “—Recent events have confirmed my suspicions that you are a—”

“What?” demanded Græme in a slow tone.

“Nay—I may be wrong. But I firmly believe I saw you one of the
foremost in a party of freebooters who boarded and robbed the brig in which
I came passenger.”

Morris Græme pleasantly smiled at this charge, twirled his mustache and
laughed aloud.

“Truly, Hayward, you have a good memory. I was not there, nor could
you have seen me therefore.” '

This settles the question here. But in the last chapter comes the difficulty!
In this are these words from the lips of “Morris Græme,” when he
surprises Blanche on the shore at Colonel Powel's country seat—

` “—But you (to Blanche) whose name I have breathed when my
thoughts were purest, pardon me the insult that I dared to offer on our former
meeting, and pray for me when I am gone.” '

Now, Mr. Author, if Morris Græme was the “captain,” how is it that
you have made him say, with the evident intention that the reader should
receive it as the fact, that he was not there? If Morris Græme was the
leader, where was Carleton—who hovers like a mist among the scenes;
indistinct, and hardly a character of the novel, and yet, the pirate chief?—
Either Morris Græme and Carleton were one and the same person, under
two names, which I cannot believe, (though my brother Tom does, and insists
upon it,) or in the last chapter you meant to have written “Carleton”
instead of “Morris Græme,” and made the former the hero of the interview
with Blanche. Tell me if this is not the true state of the matter,
and that you very unpardonably and carelessly forgot the plot of your own
story, and left your “intelligent” readers in as great a mist as you have left
Carleton. You may reply by a line in Mr. Clapp's Evening Gazette, which
my uncle takes, or through the Post Office, to