Tour_.

Friday, 7th September.

My Dear Old Friend,--I am sending.... some letters for you
by this same post. They are to three splendid fellows, full
of power to help you, and certain to be eager to use it

If I could have seen you personally, I had it in mind to say
many things which don't lend themselves to pen and ink. Some
of them perhaps can be put down with a minimum of
awkwardness.

You are primarily, in the American mind, an eminent
novelist. They have read you (in printed cheap editions) by
the score of thousands. They think of you as a cousin of
Dickens, Thackeray, Reade and the rest. Now that is your
role marked out for you by God. Stick to it, wear reasonably
conventional clothes, cultivate an intelligently conventional
aspect, and do not for your life say anything about the
stage or the latter-day hard luck you have had, or anything
else which will not commend itself to a popular sense which,
although artistic on one side is implacably Philistine on
the other. They have a tremendous regard for Reade. Carry
yourself as if you were the undoubted inheritor of the Reade
traditions. Think how Reade himself would have borne
himself--then strike out from it all the bumptious and
aggressive parts--and be the rest.

Two things destroy a man in America. One is the
suggestion of personal eccentricity, Bohemianism, etc. The
other is a disposition for criticism and controversy on
their own subjects. The latter is the more dangerous of the
two. It is a people devoured by the newspaper habit, like
the Irish or the old Greeks of the Areopagus. They ask every
few minutes "What is the news?" Thousands of smart young men
are hustling about fifteen hours a day to answer that
ceaseless question. If it occurs to any one of them anywhere
to say: "Well, here is a cocky Englishman who is over here
to make some money, but who is unable to resist the
temptation to harangue us on our shortcomings"--just that
minute you are damned--irrevocably damned. That one sniff of
blood will suffice. The whole pack will be on your shoulders
within twenty-four hours.

Yet, don't mistake me. These same newspaper men are nice
fellows, kindly to a fault, if you avoid rubbing them the
wrong way. Swear to yourself that you will be geni