only reply in a working life of thirty years to any of the "slashers"
with whose devotion I am told that I have been honored--I sometimes
think, good brother critics, that I have had my share of the attentions
of poisoned weapons.

But, regarding my reviewers with the great good humor of one who never
reads what they say, I can afford to wish them lively luck and better
game in some quivering writer who takes the big pile of what it is the
fashion to call criticisms from the publisher's table, and
conscientiously reads them through. With _this_ form of being "put
to the question" I will have nothing to do. If it gives amusement to the
reviewers, they are welcome to their sport. But they stab at the summer
air, so far as any writer is concerned who has the pertinacity of
purpose to let them alone.

Long after I had adopted the rule to read no notices of my work, I
learned from George Eliot that the same had been her custom for many
years, and felt reënforced in the management of my little affairs by
this great example. Discussing the question once, with one of our
foremost American writers, I was struck with something like holy envy in
his expression. He had received rough handling from those "critics" who
seem to consider authors as their natural foes, and who delight in
aiming the hardest blows at the heaviest enemy. His fame is immeasurably
superior to that of all his reviewers put together.

"Don't you really read them?" he asked, wistfully. "I wish I could say
as much. I'm afraid I shouldn't have the perseverance to keep that up
right along."

In interesting contrast to all this discord from the outside, came the