To those who know something of the writer--sufficient, let us say, to enable him to put an approximate value on his or her sentiments, so as to form a more or less accurate guess as to when, he is speaking from his own mind, when he is speaking from the mind of the puppet in hand, and when he is merely putting a case--a person's books are full of information, and bring that person into a closer and more intimate contact with the reader than any amount of personal intercourse.

For whatever is best and whatever is worst in an individual will be reflected in his pages, seeing that, unless he is the poorest of hack authors, he must of necessity set down therein the images that pass across the mirrors of his heart.
Thus it seemed to Eustace, who knew "Jemima's Vow" and also her previous abortive work almost by heart, that he was very intimately acquainted with Augusta, and as he was walking home that May evening, he was reflecting sadly enough of all that he had lost through that cruel shipwreck.

He had lost Augusta, and, what was more, he had lost his uncle and his uncle's vast fortune.

For he, too, had seen the report of the application re Meeson in the _Times_, and, though he knew that he was disinherited, it was a little crushing.

He had lost the fortune for Augusta's sake, and now he had lost Augusta also; and he reflected, not without dismay, on the long dreary existence that stretched away before him, filled up as it were with prospective piles of Latin proofs.