Chapter XXXIV: Introduction (2)

"Mr. Parry thinks indeed that Mr. Dane had poisoned my mind regarding them. But he also thought Mrs.----'s mind was jaundiced. Perhaps that question belongs to the doctors rather than the referees. Whether it be poison or jaundice it is to be hoped the disease may not spread.

"There are other parts of Mr. Parry's statements which I should like to lay before the referees, but I remember that they are mortal, and though the spirit is willing the flesh is weak, and I forbear.

"IN CONCLUSION,

I claim that my first contract for 'City Lights,' specially stipulating ten per cent., shall be carried out in good faith; and that it shall not be considered as changed or modified by any conversation remembered by Mr. Hunt, but absolutely denied by myself. And I claim that the word edition used therein shall be held to mean just what Mr. Parry admits it would mean in common acceptation with the book-trade, namely, one thousand copies.

"2. I claim that my second contract, covering 'Alba Dies,' 'Rocks of Offense,' and 'Old Miasmas,' was obtained from me under a total misapprehension of facts, that this misapprehension of mine was the result of a misrepresentation (I do not say intentional) made to me by Mr. Hunt in his letter of September 23, 1764, wherein he represents the arrangement as one uniform among their authors and as assuring me a rate of compensation, which he leaves me to infer, I might not otherwise obtain, whereas he knew that the arrangement was not uniform and that my percentage would amount to more as prices were then tending,--and the arrangement was made by him so as to prevent my ten per cent. from amounting to more than fifteen cents per copy. This I did not understand, and should not have assented to if I had understood it. I hold that neither in law, equity, morals, nor manners should I be held to an agreement which I did not comprehend, which the opposite party so presented as to prevent my comprehending it, and which deprived me of my proportionate share of an increase of profit admitted to have been made on the books published under it. The contract, therefore, should be set aside, and I should be paid according to the usage of publishers, or at the same rate as appears in the contract for 'City Lights,' namely, ten per cent.

"3. I claim that on my books published since the date of my second contract, and not alluded to or included in either contract, namely, 'Winter Work,' 'Holidays,' 'Pencillings,' 'Cotton Picking,' and 'Rights of Men,' my compensation shall be fixed by the usage existing among publishers and authors.

"4. I claim and must certainly be entitled to receive interest at the rate of seven per cent. on all sums found to be due me at the date of the several semi-annual settlements, counting my compensation uniformly at the rate of ten per cent. on the retail price of the books at the date of the settlement. This point is so plain that it can need no argument.

"5. I claim that I am equitably entitled to damages to compensate me for the loss that has resulted to me pecuniarily and otherwise from this unhappy occurrence. My pecuniary damage alone amounts to more than three thousand dollars. There are hurts of other kinds to which money bears no relation.

"My actual expenses in preparing for this reference have been very considerable, and under the award of costs I claim that I should have an ample allowance made me to cover my outlays in this regard."

After this statement had been read, Messrs. Hunt, Parry, & Co. were permitted to make whatever of reply they chose. They denied no fact, and challenged no inference in my statement.

The referees, after two days of deliberation, returned the following decision:--

"The undersigned, mutually agreed upon as referees in the matter in controversy between M. N. and Messrs. Hunt, Parry, & Co., on their own account, and as successors of Brummell & Hunt, hereby award to M. N. the sum of twelve hundred and fifty dollars, to be paid her by Hunt, Parry, & Co., within three days from the date of this paper in full compensation for her claims upon the matter in this controversy--and that hereafter M. N. shall receive ten per cent. copyright on the retail price of all her books printed by Hunt, Parry, & Co., except the three books embraced in the contract between the parties dated September 24, 1764. The referees decline any compensation for services or expenses and leave each party to pay their own costs.

"Signed and delivered, April 30, 1769.

"J. RUSSELL.

"G. W. HAMPDEN."

X.

SOBER SECOND AND THIRD THOUGHTS.

HAVING trespassed so far on the patience of the reader, I may as well presume a little further, and indulge in a few reflections.

First, from the investigations and observations of the last two years, I infer that authors are very much to blame in their business dealings. By their inexactness, their indifference, their unreasonable and indolent trust, and their excessive monetary stupidity, they not only become an easy prey of, but they offer a direct temptation to the cupidity of publishers. Not a single author to whom I appealed showed the slightest reluctance to answer my questions, nor, I may almost add, the slightest ability to answer them adequately. For instance, the points I wished to ascertain were whether a writer was paid by percentage or by a fixed sum: what was the percentage and what the fixed sum: and whether during or subsequent to the year 1764 any change was made in the mode or rate of payment.

See now how charmingly the authors met my points.

Says one, "Brummell and Hunt never published but ---- with me and I received on this the usual beggarly percentage;" leaving me entirely in the dark as to what was the beggarly percentage.

Says another: "What terms do I make with B. & H.? Yes, with all my heart. In regard to ----, they print and sell and allow me a certain sum on all copies sold;" but with the greatest inclination in the world giving me no hint of the amount of that "certain sum."

Says another: "Brummell & Hunt have, I believe, allowed me ten per cent. on the retail price of my books. That was the first arrangement at least, but I must confess I never look at their statements of account."

Says a fourth: "I have always received a percentage.... I remember no change in 1764, unless that B. & H. about that time (perhaps earlier) without my asking it, raised the sum they paid me for ----, etc.... The interests of authors and publishers are identical--a fact which they understand better than we do."

Yet the firm testified of this very writer that they had written agreements to pay him percentage, and that when prices advanced they waived the percentage, and paid him a certain (lower) sum per volume.

A fifth says: "I have not the least objection in the world in replying to your letter in the most straightforward way.... I have been contented with ten per cent. on the retail price of my printed books."

Yet the written contracts of this writer showed every variety of arrangement from twenty per cent. downward.

A sixth says: "Messrs. B. & H. have published four books for me.... The three first named sell for $1.25, and I receive twelve cents each copy."

But Messrs. B. & H. affirmed that these books sold for $1.50 each.

A seventh says: "I did not send your letter to ----, for the reason that she does not know as much as you do about the subject of its inquiry. The most she could tell you would be, that now and then there comes a bit of paper very neatly and tastefully diversified by red and blue lines, and dreadfully complicated by sundry hieroglyphics, which she has been told are figures, and that a check embellished with one of the rows of figures accompanies it.... I have an impression that years ago, when ---- was taking such sesquipedalian strides to public favor, Mr. Brummell told me that after the number of copies sold had reached a certain point, the author received a reduced percentage, and I think I remember wondering by what perversion of commercial philosophy, an article of which fifty thousand copies could be sold, was worth less, proportionally, than one of which only five thousand could be bartered, for of course the ratio of cost decreased with every successive thousand manufactured."

Here, it will be perceived, is a faint glimmer of sense, which will be completely extinguished by the next extract.

"---- said you made a mistake in thinking yourself differently used from the rest of the writing craft, and explained that the profits of the author did not keep up the same proportion in repeated editions, but went to pay the increased circulation. For his part he would rather be more poorly paid for the sake of being more widely read."

Must not that have been an explanation worth having? It is not difficult to conjecture the source whence that form of explanation originated, for another letter says, "Mr.---- went to see Mr. Hunt.... Mr. Hunt expressed great regret that it had all happened; said 'Rights of Men,' had done more for your reputation than any other book; that you made more than the publishers did, etc., and that they thought better to have a low per cent. and large sales, than the contrary; though I don't see what a low per cent. paid to the author has to do with large sales, if the price of the book is kept high to purchasers."

The fact, is that as a bad woman is said to be a great deal worse than a bad man, so a man innocent of business capacity, is far more innocent than any woman can be. A woman may be never so silly, but there is generally a substratum of hard sense somewhere. A man may be never so wise, and yet completely destitute of this practical ability. It is largely in behalf of these helpless, harmless, deluded, and betrayed gentlemen, that I have felt called to take up arms. What sword would not leap from its scabbard to maintain the cause of the weak and the wronged?

But though I admit and lament that authors are unpractical and unbusiness-like to the last degree, I must affirm that they have less inducement to be business-like and less opportunity to be practical than any other class of persons. Suppose a writer sets out with the determination to be prudent and sagacious, where shall he begin? If a farmer has a bushel of potatoes to sell, he knows, or can learn in a moment, precisely their market value. The Early Rose has its price, and the Jackson White has its price; there is no room for doubt, or misgiving, or mistake. But the author has not and cannot have the least notion of the market value of his products. He does not even know their intrinsic value. He does not know whether he has raised an Early Rose or a dead-and-gone Chenango. He may have spent his strength on what is absolutely unsalable. His work is production, but for its worth he must depend solely on the word of those who buy and sell. After a while he does indeed arrive at something like a scale of value, but he never reaches such a degree of certainty as to feel assured of any special piece of work. Every one must be judged by itself. Five successful books are no absolute guaranty that the sixth will not be worthless.

It seems to me, also, that there is no business in which so few checks exist as in that of publishing. An author, we will say, agrees to receive ten per cent. on the retail price of all copies of his works that are sold, but he has literally nothing but the publisher's word by which to know how many copies are sold. The manufacturer knows how many he has made, but it would be offensive to ask for the manufacturer's accounts, and moreover he would probably not render them if asked. He would consider it as betraying the secrets of the trade, or the trust of his employers, or otherwise impertinent and unwarranted. Of course a false return of sales would be fraud, and somewhat complicated fraud; but human ingenuity combined with human depravity has been known to surmount obstacles to crime as formidable as these, and the danger of detection is infinitessimally small. If there be any such thing in arithmetic as the Double Rule of Three,--and I seem to have a vague impression that there is,--it may well be brought to the solution of the problem: if a publisher may for years safely disregard, not to say violate, the condition of a contract which an author has before his eyes in plain black and white, how long may another publisher safely falsify accounts which an author never sees, and which he could not understand if he should see? I have no doubt that in nine cases out of ten, and perhaps also in the tenth, the returns of sales are as accurate as the moral law. What I maintain is, that the author, be he wise as Solomon, has no means of knowing whether they are or not, while the manufacturer of all other goods knows precisely how much raw material goes into the mill and how much of the manufactured article comes out.

If the author, instead of receiving a percentage, takes half profits, he is even more at the mercy of the publisher. In the very outset the wildest theories prevail as to what constitute profits, and though the author may make heroic struggles to be exhaustively mathematical, the probabilities are that the only draught made upon his science will be the very simple effort of dividing by two whatever sum the publisher has chosen to figure up. The plan adopted by actors and actresses, to take half the gross receipts, is far more simple and sensible.

It is true that an author may take advantage of competition and seek a second market if the first prove unsatisfactory, but it is also certain that he cannot do this to any effective extent without serious injury to himself. All the skill, the vitality, the invention, the thought, which he brings to the disposition of his wares is so much taken from his producing power. He ought to be wholly free to do his best work. He ought to be able to concentrate himself on his writing. If he must turn aside to study the state of the market and superintend the details of sale and circulation, that necessity will surely tell in the deterioration of his works; and even at that cost he will not be so good a business manager as one who is to the manner born. It is a very pretty thing to be a poet-publisher--in the newspapers, but if the poet's imagination happens to get loose among the publisher's facts, it makes sad work, and it is not merry work when the publisher crops out in the poet's verses.

What then remains? It has been proposed that authors combine and form a publishing-house by themselves, publishing their own books and receiving their own profits. This plan looks simple enough, but I must confess it seems to me chimerical in the last degree. Excepting the temptations of their trade, doubtless a hundred publishers are as honest as a hundred authors, and surely they have a great deal more business sagacity. But as soon as authors turn publishers they fall into all the publisher's temptations without acquiring his business power; so that when you have chemically combined author and publisher you have an amalgam wholly and disastrously different from either of the original simples, namely, a publisher minus his common sense.

No, the publisher is not an artificial member of society. Like all other middle-men he meets a real want. He exists because in the long run it is cheaper and better for writers to employ him than to do his work themselves. Of course, the wiser and more righteous he is, the better he answers the end of his creation; but with all his imperfections on his head, he is better than nobody. A man may as well undertake to build his house with his own hands to save himself from the short-comings and extortions of carpenters, as to manufacture and distribute his own books to save himself from the extortions of publishers. We may send missionaries among them, we may gather them in to our Sunday-schools, but we need not think to exterminate them.

Authors may form publishing houses, and those houses may be successful, but if so it will be simply by adopting substantially the methods of successful publishing-houses already established. It seems to me easier and more economical to let such institutions spring from the soil, rather than attempt to construct them out of material which has already been organized into another form of life.

Shall we then take the publishers _cum grano salis_, and try to guard our interests by keeping a strict look-out? We must turn publishers ourselves to make it of any account. A detective, to be worth anything, ought to be at least as wily as the rogue he watches, and to be so he must give his mind to it, and if he give his mind to that, where-withal shall he set up any other business? An author need not rush in among publishers as Cincinnati swine are said to invade the streets with whetted knives, crying "come and eat me"; but if he on the contrary objects, steadfastly and stoutly, to being devoured, he does not know where his vulnerable point is, and cannot therefore arm himself against attack. He is not and cannot become, consistently with the proper pursuit of his own profession, sufficiently acquainted with the details of publishing to know whether a measure proposed by a publisher be or be not fair. For instance, the publisher contracts to pay ten per cent. on the retail price of a sixty-two cent book. A war comes, bringing high prices, and the book goes up to a dollar and a quarter. The publisher continues to pay the author ten per cent. of sixty-two cents, making no reference to the increased price. The author presently chances to discover it, and remonstrates. The publishers say curtly, "You will make the price of the book so large that it will have no sale," oblivious of the fact that it is not the author but themselves who have raised the price of the book. He replies that the price is not his affair; he must insist upon the contract. The publishers yield, and the author is apparently victorious. But when a second author brings up this case as a reason why he should receive his percentage, the publishers reply, "True, we did continue percentage because he insisted, but, as a warning, the book had a very poor sale." But what effect on the sale can the author's twelve and a half, instead of six and a half cents have if the price to the buyer is the same? Until some better answer is given I shall believe that the sale diminishes because the publisher chooses it; because he prefers to sacrifice a small sum on a single volume as a warning to contumacious authors, rather than encourage rebellion by continuing to receive profits of which he must divert a larger share to the author. If he can, by one or two examples, show restive writers that the question is not between six and a half cents and twelve and a half cents on a thousand books, but between six and a half on a thousand, and twelve and a half on a hundred, the sum he sacrifices in showing it is not a bad investment.

Since, then, the publisher has matters within his own grasp so entirely that what he is forced to pay with one hand he can easily pluck with the other, I do not clearly see the advantage to be gained by insisting on any special bargain with him. Perhaps I do not quite know what I am talking about. I suspect, on the whole, I do not. But my remarks are all the more valuable for that. If, after two years of clapper-clawing among a quartette of cats, a mouse is still unskilled in feline ways, in what state of helplessness must be those unadventurous little things who have never left their holes?

But there are the books of the firm which the suspected publisher opens to you with a frankness of innocence that ought to disarm and convince the most hardened unbeliever. Any demur is met by an invitation to come and look at "the books." The trail of the Serpent is over all the rest of the world, but "the books" have escaped the contamination of original sin and shine with the purity of Paradise. Burglars blow open safes, banks and directors and cashiers and tellers come to grief, but "the books" always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Nowithstanding which I, from the beginning, instinctively gave those "books" a wide berth. They were to me like the "magick bookes" of Spenser's hermite. "Let none them read." That "the books" are not always "reliable gentlemen" will have been inferred from the account which they professed to have sent me, and which was--lost in the mail. That "the books" are not always intelligible witnesses would appear, could we know how many unwary persons have gone to them in pursuit of knowledge, and found the difficulty insurmountable. "We had the books here," said one benighted author of no mean repute, "and I examined them, and Kate examined them, and Frank examined them, and the Major examined them, and we could make nothing of them." That the books have been made to do yeoman's service in this battle has already been seen, and by various tokens it would seem that they have not yet been dismissed the service. Only to-day a letter says, "But the account of the sales of your book and the sums paid you for them, as I derived them from the books of Mr. Hunt, convinced me that whatever the bargain might be you had a better one than _I_ had. I have half profits--you have had more."

That is what "the books" say unquestionably; but what a stiff-necked and perverse author refuses to believe without further proof. When a publisher shows me receipted bills for the sums he has actually paid in manufacturing and publishing my books, and for the sums he has received from their sale, I will--take them to an expert for examination; but when he proposes to set me down before a mighty maze of figures, which for aught that appears, may all have been conjured up by his imagination, and begs me to deduce from them any conclusion whatever, I decline with thanks. That contention I leave off before it be meddled with. It is not necessary to be a Solomon in order to know enough to keep away from figures which it is necessary to be a Solomon to understand, and which when understood are much like the "litle flyes cal'd out of deepe darknes dredd" by the hermite before referred to, and which,--

"Fluttring about his ever-damned hedd,
Awaite whereto their service he applyes,
To aide his friendes, or fray his enemies."

There remains also to the wronged or suspicious author recourse to the law or to the more informal arbitration, but this also is vanity. To me a lawsuit seemed utterly intolerable, but my experience of arbitration was so repulsive, and is so hideous in memory--and this solely from the nature of things, since, alike from the referees and from Messrs. Parry and Markman who, like St. Paul, were the chief speakers, on the other side, I met only courtesy--that a lawsuit seems attractive in comparison; but if I had instituted a lawsuit, without doubt adverse fate hereafter would have been implored to take any shape but that! If two parties are really bent on getting at the vital facts, presenting absolute truth, securing exact and essential justice, nothing can be more to the purpose apparently than a reference to disinterested, non-professional, intelligent, and friendly persons; but two parties honestly bent on such an object would probably have nothing to quarrel over. Even if they have it is not certain that the informal is better than the formal mode of settlement. If there are no facts to be hushed up, a legal investigation will do no harm; if there are facts to be hushed up, a legal investigation is necessary. We look at the law as at best a clumsy roundabout way of arriving at just conclusions--a method full of ingenious devices to entangle and confuse witnesses and make the worse appear the better reason. We take the informal arbitration as a short cut to the desired goal. On the whole I am inclined to think that the law is the shortest cut in the known world. The rules which obtain in courts of justice and which seem to the unprofessional mind a mere medley of arbitrary vexations and restrictions, are the result of the experience of ages, and with all their short-comings and their long-comings do probably present the most expeditious and unerring mode of reaching truth which human wit and wisdom have yet devised. If so we cannot depart from them without loss. In ridding ourselves of their clumsiness we rid ourselves also of their effectiveness. We rend away the red tape, but the package immediately falls apart into a worthless heap of memoranda. You avoid a lawsuit because of the publicity and multiplicity and infelicity of lawyers, witnesses, judge, and jury. You adopt a reference because it dispenses with all these and goes straight at the heart of things. But you find by experience that unless your opponent wishes it you may not get at the heart of things at all. In a lawsuit you can enforce measures; in a reference you are dependent upon courtesy. Your opponent presents only that which is good in his own eyes. He produces what he chooses; he withholds what he chooses. To be sure you do the same; but you, angel that you are, have nothing to hide, while he, the fiend! has all manner of wiles and wickedness to conceal. If now you were in court, politeness and impertinence would be equally and wholly out of the question. It is the duty and delight of lawyers to find out everything--and such is the depravity of the legal heart, it is especially their duty and delight to ferret out what the opposite party desires to conceal. It is not what a man wishes and means to say, but everything which he can be made to say, that a lawyer wants. His hand can put aside the proffered "books," and grab the books which are withheld. He does not permit the opposite parties to select and exclude witnesses, but goes out into the highways and hedges and compels to come in whom he wants. The law winds a long way round, but it sets you down as near your journey's end as the nature of things permits. A private reference takes a short cut, but it has no inherent power to carry you far from your starting-point. Arbitration has the advantage in respect of privacy, and that is an advantage not to be overestimated. Still, if there is anything to choose when both are intolerable, it seems rather worse to speak yourself before five men, than to have some one else to speak for you before five hundred. It matters not how wise, how impartial, referees may be, their jurisdiction is necessarily limited, and they cannot go beyond it to compel, or extort, or present. They must judge on what is spontaneously set before them. If to avoid trouble and unpleasantness be your object, it is better to submit to everything and keep out of strife altogether. If you set out to accomplish an end, it is better to shut eyes and ears to disagreements, and take the road which common experience designates as the surest and safest in the long run.

But I most heartily advise writers in general to do neither. So far as the improvement of one's fortune goes, nothing is more futile. One should be exact, prompt, methodical, and intelligent so far as possible. He will thus exert a salutary influence over his publisher, and will be far more likely to receive his dues than if he believes "in uninquiring trust" and lives wholly by faith. But it is better for his purse to take what a publisher chooses to give than to make an ado about it afterwards. Even if successful in regard to the particular sum he claims, it is at a cost of time and trouble altogether disproportionate to it. He plays an unequal game at best, because the publisher's business goes on serenely, during all the difficulty, while the author's must be at a stand-still. The very instrument that he uses in defending his works is the instrument which he ought to be using in producing them. Even as a pecuniary transaction it is far more profitable to sow seed for future harvests than to spend strength in trying to secure the gleanings of last year's growths. The money proceeds of the insurrection, whose history has been given in these pages, was twelve hundred and fifty dollars. The whole amount claimed to make up ten per cent. was about three thousand dollars, and considering that my whole plan of proceedings was demolished in the beginning, and that the case had to present itself, as one may say, smothered in a mass of irrelevant details, and deprived of much that was to the purpose, I reckoned myself extremely well off. But even had the whole sum been awarded, it would have been no very munificent compensation for eighteen months of literary labor, apart from the fact that the labor was of a kind for which no money could compensate. In its baldest shape, the results of a year and a half of work were twelve hundred and fifty dollars, or little more than one third of what was claimed on previous work. I think myself therefore justified in asserting that though quarreling with your publishers may be very good as a crusade, it is a very poor way of getting a living.

Let me here correct an impression that seems to prevail somewhat extensively as to the rewards of literary life. It certainly has its rewards, and of the most delightful kind. What joys it may bring in the higher walks I do not know, but even on the lower levels, I should like to live forever--a thousand years to begin with, at any rate. I could speak as enthusiastically as a certain popular writer, "once more famous than now," "Of all the blessings which my books have brought me,--blessings of inward wealth that cannot be so much as named,--blessings so rich, so divine, that I sometimes think nothing ever was so beautiful as to have written a book."

But so far as literature pays cash down it is not to be compared to--shoemaking, for instance. The daily papers have been circulating a paragraph to the effect that a recent popular book had gone to a second edition and that its author had already received from it twelve thousand dollars. I am not prepared to deny the statement; but I know an author of nine books, not it is to be hoped on the same footing of intrinsic merit, but books which have travelled up to nine, ten, and fourteen editions, whose author never has received and never expects to receive twelve thousand dollars on the whole lot.

Let nothing in this remark be construed into anything like complaint. On the contrary, authors ought to be grateful to their publishers for allowing them so large a gratuity. As Mr. Parry remarked concerning the appropriation of an edition of fifteen hundred books to the use of the firm, they might have taken more if they had chosen. And when we reflect that not only do they bestow upon us these large sums of money, but, as sundry extracts in other parts of this volume show, they first manufacture for us the fame which brings the money, we are, in the language of the hymn, lost in wonder, love, and praise. It must be heart-rending to fashion your graven image and then have that image turn upon you and demand a share of the profits!

Unhappily a dense ignorance upon this subject broods over the community, and there should be added to our literature an

AUTHOR'S CATECHISM.

1. _Question._ Can you tell me, child, who made you?

_Answer._ The great House of Hunt, Parry, & Co., which made heaven
and earth.

In controversies with publishers, the author is at a signal disadvantage by reason of the connection of publishers with the press. Publishers have the entrée of the newspapers by their advertising, and all in the way of business, it is the easiest thing in the world to give public opinion a tilt in the desired direction without the least suspicion on the part of the reader, or any more collusion on the part of the editor than is implied in a good-natured relinquishment of a few lines of editorial space. Here, we will say, is a house which advertises to the extent of hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars in a single paper. In connection with an extraordinary advertisement, it hands to the editor an extraordinary paragraph, celebrating its more extraordinary virtues. The advertisement goes in among the advertisements, and the eulogy goes in among the editorials and becomes the voice of the paper. Nobody is hurt, and the firm is greatly helped in building up for itself name and fame. When the Athenian newspapers glow with reflections upon the inability of authors to understand the details of publishing and the unimpeached and unimpeachable honor of the house of Hunt, Parry, & Co., not half a dozen readers suspect that those reflections are anything but the spontaneous tribute of a grateful people to the eminent firm in question. Nobody suspects that behind all the glitter and glory some pestiferous little author is poking an inquisitive finger in among those details, is indeed questioning that unimpeached and unimpeachable honor, and that this beating of gongs is but Chinese strategy on the part of the attacked, to scare away the impertinent foe. I can make no avowal on this head, having nothing but internal evidence to go upon: but applying the rules of Scriptural exegesis, it seems to me that we attribute to the four Gospels a divine origin on less evidence than we may attribute to these eulogies a common origin.

For instance, during that portion of the sidereal year known throughout the solar system as Jubilee week, the press of Athens burned with enthusiasm for the house of Hunt, Parry, & Co.

"The broadside advertisement," says one, "with which the renowned publishing house of Messrs. Hunt, Parry, & Co. salute the country in this jubilee time on another page of this morning's Post, will excite universal attention and remark. It details the literary achievements of this enterprising firm during the last year and a half in a form that is both novel and impressive. Where are the publishers on this continent who within that term have presented to the reading public works from [how many?] different authors, nearly all of whom are living celebrities? It would be glory enough for any firm to have announced original works from less than one fourth that number of well-known authors. Read the glittering roll of names as they are presented. In poetry, L., T., L., B., and W. Of novelists, D., T., S., H., H., R., and G. And of essayists, travellers, writers on natural history and science, such a shining company of men and women of genius as will make book-shelves brilliant for all time to come. But these publishers have not compromised quality with quantity. They hold up to their high standard in every essay in which they engage. Nor are they in any sense such devotees of Mammon as to think it possible to build a lasting reputation on anything less substantial than true honor in dealing as well as indisputable worth in selection.

"Their shelves and counters are an embarrassment of literary riches. Such a display of the ripest fruits of culture, taste, judgment, enterprise, and business sagacity cannot be surpassed. Their wonderful march to their eminent and leading position as publishers has given an excellent example to the country in refining and solidifying the common rules of business in their own field, and elevating and dignifying a branch of trade than which not one is clothed with nobler and purer associations. From this house, also, go forth a quarterly, two monthlies, and a weekly magazine, any one of which would add lustre to the repute of the publishers. None but sound and sweet literature comes from hence. It is the aim of the firm to keep the fountain clear from which such incessant streams of influence are to flow. American authors contribute in large store to the rich treasury of its productions, while foreign, and especially British writers supply in large degree the stores of reading, which are the recreation and delight of cultivated people everywhere."

And thus another paper takes up the parable:--

"Our first page to-day is entirely devoted to a remarkable advertisement, which tells the story of rare business enterprise, and is filled to overflowing with attractive announcements. But it is for characteristics other than these that it will command attention and really deserve study. Within a year and a half, Hunt, Parry, & Co. have given to the public works from the pens of two score of authors, American and English, almost all of them living and of widest popularity. To represent in print a half-dozen of the most prominent on the list might be the making of any firm; to take care of the whole of them would seem to be an embarrassment of riches. But the establishment has done and is doing this, with unremitting energy and in good style. We need not take room to run over the long and brilliant catalogue; a glance at the eight columns will reveal a galaxy of shining names. Observe the poets,--T., B., L., and L., W., and the rest; count up the novelists--S., T., D., R., G., H., and others of the tribe; consider the array of essayists, travellers, and naturalists, men and women of mark; and then ask whether Hunt, Parry, & Co. are surpassed by any of their contemporaries in their numerous issues, taking quantity, quality, and variety into the account. In offering this broadside programme of their performances, as bookmakers and booksellers, to the crowds of Jubilee week, they put forth a statement of indisputable facts; give a transcript of the record of the volumes they have issued, and their relations to eminent writers.

"Their achievements imply something more than an immediate and exclusive eye to the main chance. It is evident that the honorable pursuit of profit is not with them the sole consideration. [O that it were!] They desire to connect their names with good literature, advanced thought, and the intellectual progress of the age. They would be known for their taste and liberal policy as well as for their mercantile success; acting upon the principle that character as well as money is worth earning in the pursuits of trade and commerce. Without entering into comparisons, thus much is fairly to be inferred from their extended advertisement. It tells of results which imply the existence of the qualities we have attributed to them; for without such qualities such results could not have been attained. The evidence of culture, judgment, sagacity, energy, boldness, tact, skill, and whatever else goes to the building up of a publishing house known at home and abroad for its magnitude and the extent and variety of its ventures, is literally such that he who runs may read and see that it is beyond controversy. This is not extravagant praise or mere compliment; but simply the statement of the truth as made manifest by the facts.

"In this general reference to Messrs. Hunt, Parry, & Co., we must not, in passing, omit an allusion to their periodicals. To them the public are indebted for the maintenance of the oldest Greek Quarterly, the agreeable and fresh weekly selections of 'Every Tuesday,' the wide circulation and high character for ability, diversity, and independence of the 'Adriatic Monthly,' and that leading magazine of its class, 'The Buddhist.'

"In thus calling attention to a publishing house whose imprint is known wherever the Greek language is spoken or read, we are pointing to what is one of the leading concerns in a most important branch of the business of the city, of which others besides its proprietors may well be proud. Not only has it grown with the growing culture of the country, but it has encouraged home authors, and spread far and wide the best productions of the best writers on the other side of the Atlantic; thus giving it a claim to honorable consideration as holding a high place among the beneficent agencies of the advancing civilization of the world."

And a third chimes in:--

"The firm of Hunt, Parry, & Co., now almost as familiar to the public under the new name as under the old colors with which it sailed so long, has been a bulwark and a rallying point for our literature, on which book buyers as well as book writers depended for many years. It has always been active, but never so active as now. In another part of this paper, this house advertise their principal publications for the past eighteen months. With little more amplification than a catalogue, the list fills a very considerable space; but it is when we come to appreciate quality as well as quantity that its full importance is realized. No other Athenian house could bulletin such a list of authors, beginning with L., and ranging along the varied types of our literature, from W., S., H., H., and L., to P., H., and A. Nor can any house exhibit such a list of English writers, with the added merit of the authors' sanction, as T., B., H., E., D., and R.

"Periodicals have come to be recognized as necessary tenders to the business of every book firm; but the monthlies and the quarterly, etc., etc., etc.

"Whatever may be the differing opinions after the experiences of this week, upon the commercial position and prospects of Athens and the success of her musical experiments, there can be no dispute as to our preëminence among Greek cities as a literary centre. Even Corinthians, bitterly as they may sneer at our Jubilee, are forced to read the works of Athenian authors and to supply their libraries with Athenian books. It would be impossible to estimate approximately the influence in producing the literary character of the city, its clustering of authors, its tone of society, of one great publishing house; but unquestionably that influence is very great."

An ill-timed modesty on the part of the firm of Hunt, Parry, & Co. has apparently prevented the publication of the fact, but it is well known in Athenian social circles that the eclipse which made the last summer famous, and which elicited so much interest throughout the scientific world, was not owing to the interposition of the moon between our planet and the sun, but was chiefly due to the temporary disappearance from this continent of the senior partner of the house of Hunt, Parry, & Co.

I do not say that the extracts which I have quoted, and others which I might quote, emanated from the same pen, or that that pen was held in the interest of Hunt, Parry, & Co., but I do say that on any other theory the correspondence of thought, of illustration, and even of language is not a little remarkable.

And if this theory be correct, if the house which has perhaps the reputation of being the most liberal, the most generous, and the most refined publishing house in this country, has attained that reputation by assiduously blowing its own trumpet while assiduously strangling its own authors, of what value is reputation?

A novel and striking illustration of my theme has just come to hand in the publication of Miss Mitbridge's "Letters." In 1754 she writes of Mr. Hunt: "He is a partner in the greatest publishing house of Greece, and the especial patron of----, whom he found starving, and has made affluent by his encouragement and liberality, for the great romancer is so nervous that he wants as much kindness of management, as much mental nursing as a sick child. I have never known a more charming person than Mr. Hunt."

The author to whom Miss Mitbridge refers is the author of whose real or supposed wrongs I have before spoken. If these publishers were indeed so liberal towards him, the unanimity with which that author's family and friends agree in attributing to them the contrary policy is a singular proof of ingratitude to benefactors; and Mr. Hunt may well exclaim with the Prophet of old, "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me."

I do not know what force these adulatory remarks may have upon the minds of others, but my experience and my information are such that whenever I see in the newspapers a fresh ascription of praise to the liberality of this house, I immediately infer that the screw has been given another turn on some unlucky author. The firm appears to me in the similitude of evil-minded hens cackling their noisy cut-cut-cut-ca-dah-cut over each new-laid egg, designing to conceal from an uninquiring public that, like those laymen denounced by Isaiah, they "hatch cockatrices' eggs; he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper."

At a later period these general paragraphs began to converge around a particular point, and snugly nestled in among the literary items of religious newspapers may be found such announcements as this:--

"The public is threatened with a new book by the once redoubtable M. N., in which she is to narrate her tribulations, real or imaginary, with the eminent publishers, Hunt, Parry, & Co. Authors are very apt to have extravagant ideas of the popularity and profits of their books, unmindful of the fact that, generally, they are indebted to their publishers for a large proportion of their fame, and it will take several books to convince the public that H., P., & Co. deal unfairly with their authors. Thus far, H., P., & Co. have kept quiet during M. N.'s attacks, but we hope the time will come when they will vindicate themselves."

And almost simultaneously, in another quarter of the heavens, appears a similar turtle-dove, its pin-feathers developed into well-defined plumage, but unquestionably a bird of the same brood:--

"M. N., once more famous than now, had a little 'unpleasantness' with her publishers, Hunt, Parry, & Co. In plain words, she accused them of cheating her out of some thousands of dollars by making false returns of sales of her books. Like many authors, she had become inordinately vain, and had extravagant ideas of the popularity of her books, and was, as is too often the case, unmindful of the fact that a large portion of what fame she then had (but has now lost) was made for her by these self-same publishers. She had a quarrel with them of eighteen months standing, but they would not even appear in self-defense; what man would want to have an open quarrel with a woman? To any one acquainted with the details of book publishing, the charge she brings against H., P., & Co. is simply absurd; and besides, no business man would ever dare to suspect this publishing house to attempt such a system of petty cheating, and which, if attempted, would involve an amount of detail inconsistent with the end to be reached. H., P., & Co. are above the taint of suspicion. The truth is, M. N.'s books did not sell so well as she expected, and her pride (and her pocket) had a fall. It is known to us that an enormous outlay in advertising failed to make a remunerative sale on her last book. It fell dead on the market. It is now very quietly rumored that she has written a little volume which she proposes to call 'Little Men,' in which she describes her tribulations with the house of H., P., & Co.... M. N., you had better not! the public will not believe you."

The public will at least believe that, though a once redoubtable author, like Giant Pope in the Pilgrim's Progress, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, be grown crazy and stiff in his joints, he can at least sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at publishers as they go by, and biting his nails, because he cannot come at them!

It is not probable that these later paragraphs were actually written by the rose, but by some one who lives near the rose, and who takes roseate views of the situation.

When one has been introduced behind the scenes, these little touches go for what they are worth, but outside, they unquestionably, if imperceptibly, affect public opinion, and like an army of moral polyps build high the walls of lofty Rome. (A new species of polyps, the naturalist will say, but it answers my purpose.)