the moneyed voice of the mob--a distinction to which, after all, they
have owed, and will continue to owe, their success. The names of these
magazines will readily occur to the reader, and, as they occur, he
cannot but reflect that it was just editorial individuality and a high
standard of policy that made them what they are, and what, it is
ardently to be hoped, they will still continue to be. Plutus and Demos
are the worst possible editors for a magazine; and in the end, even, it
is the best magazine that always makes the most money.




XII

THE SPIRIT OF THE OPEN


I often think, as I sit here in my green office in the woodland--too
often diverted from some serious literary business with the moon or the
morning stars, or a red squirrel who is the familiar spirit of my
wood-pile, or having my thoughts carried out to sea by the river which
runs so freshly and so truantly, with so strong a current of temptation,
a hundred yards away from my window--I often think that the strong
necessity that compelled me to do my work, to ply my pen and inkpot out
here in the leafy, blue-eyed wilderness, instead of doing it by
typewriter in some forty-two-storey building in the city, is one of
those encouraging signs of the times which links one with the great
brotherhood of men and women that have heard the call of the great god
Pan, as he sits by the river--