vanity on which our unlucky race is expected to feed. I should make an
exception. The house of Sampson, Low and Company honorably offered me,
at a very early date, a certain recognition of their editions. Other
reputable English houses since, in the case of succeeding books, have
passed contracts of a gentlemanly nature, with the disproportionately
grateful author, who was, of course, entirely at their mercy. When an
American writer compares the sturdy figures of the foreign circulation
with the attenuated numerals of such visible returns as reach him, he is
more puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse. But the relation
of foreign publishers to "home talent" is an ancient and honorable
conundrum, which it is not for this paper or its writer to solve.

Nevertheless, I found the patent medicine "Gates Ajar" delicious, and
used to compare it with Messrs. Fields and Osgood's edition _de
luxe_ with an undisguised delight, which I found it difficult to
induce the best of publishers to share.

Like most such matters, the first energy of the book had its funny and
its serious side. A man coming from a far Western village, and visiting
Boston for the first time, is said to have approached a bartender, in an
exclusive hotel, thus confidentially:

"Excuse me, but I am a stranger in this part of the country, and I want
to ask a question. Everywhere I go, I see posters up like this--'The
Gates Ajar!' 'The Gates Ajar!' I'm sick to death of the sight of the
durn thing; I haven't darst to ask what it is. Do _tell_ a fellar!
Is it a new kind of drink?"

There was a "Gates Ajar" tippet for sale in the country groceries; I
have fancied that it was a knit affair of as many colors as the jewels