collectively,--like a hostess with her tea-making, a spoonful for each
person and one for the pot. But I can tell you that there is an official
person who meditates and groans, meanwhile, in the night-watches, to
think that in some atrocious moment of good-nature or sleepiness he left
the door open and let that ungainly intruder in. Do you expect him to
acknowledge the blunder, when you tax him with it? Never,--he feels it
too keenly. He rather stands up stoutly for the surpassing merits of the
misshapen thing, as a mother for her deformed child; and as the mother
is nevertheless inwardly imploring that there may never be such another
born to her, so be sure that it is not by reminding the editor of this
calamity that you can allure him into risking a repetition of it.

An editor thus shows himself to be but human; and it is well enough to
remember this fact, when you approach him. He is not a gloomy despot,
no Nemesis or Rhadamanthus, but a bland and virtuous man, exceedingly
anxious to secure plenty of good subscribers and contributors, and very
ready to perform any acts of kindness not inconsistent with this
grand design. Draw near him, therefore, with soft approaches and mild
persuasions. Do not treat him like an enemy, and insist on reading your
whole manuscript aloud to him, with appropriate gestures. His time has
some value, if yours has not; and he has therefore educated his eye till
it has become microscopic, like a naturalist's, and can classify nine
out of ten specimens by one glance at a scale or a feather. Fancy an
ambitious echinoderm claiming a private interview with Agassiz, to
demonstrate by verbal arguments that he is a mollusk! Besides, do
you expect to administer the thing orally to each of the two hundred
thousand, more or less, who turn the leaves of the "Atlantic"? You are
writing for the average eye, and must submit to its verdict. "Do not
trouble yourself about the light on your statue; it is the light of the
public square which must test its value."