ely, and the
truth will be found inside rather than outside of my statement; but
there is at least truth enough in it to give the young author pause.
While one is preparing to sell his basket of glass, he may as well ask
himself whether it is better to part with all to one dealer or not; and
if he kicks it over, in spurning the imaginary customer who asks the
favor of taking entire stock, that will be his fault, and not the fault
of the question.

However, the most important question of all with the man of letters as
a man of business, is what kind of book will sell the best of itself,
because, at the end of the ends, a book sells itself or does not sell
at all; kissing, after long ages of reasoning and a great deal of
culture, still goes by favor, and though innumerable generations of
horses have been led to water, not one horse has yet been made to
drink. With the best, or the worst, will in the world, no publisher
can force a book into acceptance. Advertising will not avail, and
reviewing is notoriously futile. If the book does not strike the
popular fancy, or deal with some universal interest, which need by no
means be a profound or important one, the drums and the cymbals shall
be beaten in vain. The book may be one of the best and wisest books in
the world, but if it has not this sort of appeal in it, the readers of
it, and worse yet, the purchasers, will remain few, though fit. The
secret of this, like most other secrets of a rather ridiculous world,
is in the awful keeping of fate, and we can only hope to surprise it by
some lucky chance. To plan a surprise of it, to aim a book at the
public favor, is the most hopeless of all endeavors, as it is one of
the unworthiest; and I can, neither as a man of letters nor as a man of
business, counsel the young author to do it. The best that you can do
is to write the book that it gives you the most pleasure to write, to
put as much heart and soul as you have about you into it, and then hope
as hard as you can to reach the heart and soul of the great multitude
of your fellow-men. That, and that alone, is good business for a man
of letters.

The failures in literature are no less mystifying than the successes,
though they are upon the whole not so mortifying. I have seen a good
many of these failures, and I know of one case so signal that I must
speak of it, even to the discredit of the public. It is the case of a
novelist whose work seems to me of the best that