over by a friend of mine, a ticket writer, that is up to literature. I
am a young man in the Art line--in the Fine-Art line. You have seen my
works over and over again, and you have been curious about me, and you
think you have seen me. Now, as a safe rule, you never have seen me, and
you never do see me, and you never will see me. I think that's plainly
put--and it's what knocks me over.

If there's a blighted public character going, I am the party.

It has been remarked by a certain (or an uncertain,) philosopher, that
the world knows nothing of its greatest men. He might have put it
plainer if he had thrown his eye in my direction. He might have put it,
that while the world knows something of them that apparently go in and
win, it knows nothing of them that really go in and don't win. There it
is again in another form--and that's what knocks me over.

Not that it's only myself that suffers from injustice, but that I am more
alive to my own injuries than to any other man's. Being, as I have
mentioned, in the Fine-Art line, and not the Philanthropic line, I openly
admit it. As to company in injury, I have company enough. Who are you
passing every day at your Competitive Excruciations? The fortunate
candidates whose heads and livers you have turned upside down for life?
Not you. You are really passing the Crammers and Coaches. If your
principle is right, why don't you turn out to-morrow morning with the
keys of your cities on velvet cushions, your musicians playing, and your
flags flying, and read addresses to the Crammers and Coaches on your
bended knees, beseeching them to come out and govern you? Then, again,
as to your public business of all sorts, your Financial statements and
your Budgets; the Public knows much, truly, about the real doers of all
that! Your Nobles and Right Honourables are first-rate men? Yes, and so