e a book you don't want, from the
author?--said I.

--Give him a good-natured adjective or two if I can, and thank him, and
tell him I am lying under a sense of obligation to him.

--That is as good an excuse for lying as almost any,--I said.

--Yes, but look out for the fellows that send you a copy of their book
to trap you into writing a bookseller's advertisement for it. I got
caught so once, and never heard the end of it and never shall hear
it.--He took down an elegantly bound volume, on opening which
appeared a flourishing and eminently flattering dedication to
himself.--There,--said he, what could I do less than acknowledge such
a compliment in polite terms, and hope and expect the book would prove
successful, and so forth and so forth? Well, I get a letter every few
months from some new locality where the man that made that book is
covering the fences with his placards, asking me whether I wrote that
letter which he keeps in stereotype and has kept so any time these dozen
or fifteen years. Animus tuus oculus, as the freshmen used to say. If
her Majesty, the Queen of England, sends you a copy of her "Leaves from
the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands," be sure you mark your letter
of thanks for it Private!

We had got comfortably seated in his library in the mean time, and the
Master had taken up his book. I noticed that every other page was left
blank, and that he had written in a good deal of new matter.

--I tell you what,--he said,--there 's so much intelligence about
nowadays in books and newspapers and talk that it's mighty hard to write
without getting something or other worth listening to into your essay
or your volume. The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of
wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow. Every now and then I find
something in my book that seems so good to me, I can't help thinking
it must have leaked in. I suppose other people discover that it came
through a leak, full as soon as I do. You must write a book or two to
find out how much and how little you know and have to say. Then you must
read some notices of it by somebody that loves you and one or two by
somebody that hates you. You 'll find yourself a very odd piece of
property after you 've been through these experiences. They 're trying
to the constitution; I'm always glad to hear that a friend is as well as
can be expected after he 's had a book.

You must n't think there are no better things in these pages