You create in the reader's mind a strong impression that Mrs.McGinnis is thoroughly dead.

And yet, over here in the twenty-second chapter, you make a man named Thompson fall in love with her, and she is married to him, and she goes skipping around through the rest of the story as lively as a grasshopper, and you all the time alluding to Thompson as her second husband.

You see that kind of thing won't do.

It excites remark.

Readers complain about it." "You don't say I did that?
Well, now, do you know I was thinking all the time that it was _Mr._ McGinnis that I buried in the first chapter?
I must have got them mixed up somehow." "And then," continued the major, "when you introduce the hero, you mention that he has but one arm, having lost the other in battle.