method of forcing publishers to publish books which they do not want to
publish. I am not a member of the trade, but I should have thought that
few things could be easier than not to publish a book. Presumably the
agent stands over the publisher with a contract in one hand and a revolver
in the other, and, after a glance at the revolver, the publisher signs
without glancing at the contract. Secondly, it appears, authors and their
agents habitually compel the publisher to pay too much, so that he
habitually publishes at a loss. (Novels, that is.) I should love to know
how the trick is done, but "a well-known member of the trade" does not go
into details. He merely states the broad fact. Thirdly, the sevenpenny
reprint of the popular novel is ruining the already ruined six-shilling
novel. It is comforting to perceive that this wickedness on the part of
the sevenpenny reprint cannot indefinitely continue. For when there are no
six-shilling novels to reprint, obviously there can be no sevenpenny
reprints of them. There is justice in England yet; but a well-known member
of the trade has not noticed that the sevenpenny novel, in killing its own
father, must kill itself. At any rate he does not refer to the point.

I have been young, and now am nearly old. Silvered is the once brown
hair. Dim is the eye that on a time could decipher minion type by
moonlight. But never have I seen the publisher without a fur coat in
winter nor his seed begging bread. Nor do I expect to see such sights. Yet
I have seen an author begging bread, and instead of bread, I gave him a
railway ticket. Authors have always been in the wrong, and they always
will be: grasping, unscrupulous, mercenary creatures that they are! Some
of them haven't even the wit to keep their books from being burnt at the
stake by the executioners of the National Vigilance Association. I wonder
that publishers don't dispense with them altogether, and carry on unaided
the great tradition of English literature. Anyhow, publishers have had my
warm sympathy this Christmas-time. When I survey myself, as an example,