sale of books with my name on the title-page. And I am acquainted with a
few other individuals who perform the same feat. I am also acquainted with
a large number of individuals who have no connexion with the manufacture
or distribution of literature. And when I reflect upon the habits of this
latter crowd, I am astonished that I or anybody else can succeed in paying
rent out of what comes to the author from the sale of books. I know
scarcely a soul, I have scarcely ever met a soul, who can be said to make
a habit of buying new books. I know a few souls who borrow books from
Mudie's and elsewhere, and I recognize that their subscriptions yield me a
trifle. But what a trifle! Do you know anybody who really buys new books?
Have you ever heard tell of such a being? Of course, there are Franklinish
and self-improving young men (and conceivably women) who buy cheap
editions of works which the world will not willingly let die: the Temple
Classics, Everyman's Library, the World's Classics, the Universal Library.
Such volumes are to be found in many refined and strenuous homes--oftener
unopened than opened--but still there! But does this estimable practice
aid the living author to send his children to school in decent clothes? He
whom I am anxious to meet is the man who will not willingly let die the
author who is not yet dead. No society for the prevention of the death of
corpses will help me to pay my butcher's bill.

* * * * *

I know that people buy motor-cars, for the newspapers are full of the dust
of them. I know that they buy seats in railway carriages and theatres, and
meals at restaurants, and cravats of the new colour, and shares in
companies, for they talk about their purchases, and rise into ecstasies of
praise or blame concerning them. I want to learn about the people who buy
new books--modest band who never praise nor blame, nor get excited over
their acquisitions, preferring to keep silence, preferring to do good in