ccount he smiled and said he supposed I knew how
much the sum was? I answered, Yes; it was eleven pounds nine
shillings, was not it? But I owned at the same time that I never was
good at figures, and that I found English money peculiarly baffling.
He laughed now, and said, It was eleven shillings and nine pence. In
fact, after all those charges for composition, corrections, paper,
printing, binding, advertising, and editorial copies, there was a most
ingenious and wholly surprising charge of ten per cent. commission on
sales, which reduced my half from pounds to shillings, and handsomely
increased the publisher's half in proportion. I do not now dispute the
justice of the charge. It was not the fault of the half-profits
system, it was the fault of the glad young author who did not
distinctly inform himself of its mysterious nature in agreeing to it,
and had only to reproach himself if he was finally disappointed.

But there is always something disappointing in the accounts of
publishers, which I fancy is because authors are strangely constituted,
rather than because publishers are so. I will confess that I have such
inordinate expectations of the sale of my books which I hope I think
modestly of, that the sales reported to me never seem great enough.
The copyright due me, no matter how handsome it is, appears deplorably
mean, and I feel impoverished for several days after I get it. But
then, I ought to add that my balance in the bank is always much less
than I have supposed it to be, and my own checks, when they come back
to me, have the air of having been in a conspiracy to betray me.

No, we literary men must learn, no matter how we boast ourselves in
business, that the distress we feel from our publisher's accounts is
simply idiopathic; and I for one wish to bear my witness to the
constant good faith and uprightness of publishers.

It is supposed that because they have the affair altogether in their
hands they are apt to take advantage in it; but this does not follow,
and as a matter of fact they have the affair no more in their own hands
than any other business man you have an open account with. There is
nothing to prevent you from looking at their books, except your own
innermost belief and fear that their books are correct, and that your
literature has brought you so little because it has sold so little.

The author is not to blame for his superficial delusion to the
contrary, especially if he has writt