book. I said one time of a book of Lady Gregory's that it was a highly
amusing affair; and I gave numerous excerpts in support of my
statement. I had enjoyed the book greatly. It was delightful, I
thought. It was then a bit of a jolt to me to read a lengthy article
by another reviewer of the same book, who set forth that Lady Gregory
was an extremely serious person, with never a smile, and who gave
copious evidence of this point in quotations. Each of us made out a
perfectly good case.

Now suppose you read in the New York _This_, a daily paper, that
Such-and-Such a book was the best thing of its kind since Adam. And
suppose you found the same opinion to be that of the New York _Weekly
That_ and of the New York _Weekly Other_. Notwithstanding that the New
York Something-Else declared that this was the rottenest hook that ever
came from the press, you would be inclined to accept the conclusion of
the majority of critics, would you not? Well, I'll tell you this: the
man who "does" the fiction week by week for the New York _This_ and for
_The That_ and for _The Other_, is one and the same industrious person.
I know him well. He has a large family to support (which is
continually out of shoes) and his wife just presented him with a new
set of twins the other day. He is now trying to add the job on _The
Something-Else_ to his list.

Let us farther suppose that you are a magazine editor. You wrote this
Such-and-Such book yourself. You are a very disagreeable person (we
will imagine). You rejected three of my stories about my experiences
as a vagabond. Farthermore, when I remonstrated with you about this
over the telephone, you told me that you were very busy. When your
book came out I happened to review it for three papers. I tried to do
it justice although I didn't think much of the book, or of anything