in literature? We are paid by the length of our manuscript at rates
from half-a-crown a thousand words, and upwards. In the case of
fellows like Doyle and Kipling I am told it runs into pounds. How
are we to live on novels the serial rights of which to most of us
will work out at four and nine-pence.

It can't be done. It is no good telling me you can see no reason why
we should live. That is no answer. I'm talking plain business.

And what about book-rights? Who is going to buy novels of three
pages? They will have to be printed as leaflets and sold at a penny
a dozen. Marie Corelli and Hall Caine--if all I hear about them is
true--will possibly make their ten or twelve shillings a week. But
what about the rest of us? This thing is worrying me.



SHOULD SOLDIERS BE POLITE?



My desire was once to pass a peaceful and pleasant winter in
Brussels, attending to my work, improving my mind. Brussels is a
bright and cheerful town, and I think I could have succeeded had it
not been for the Belgian Army. The Belgian Army would follow me
about and worry me. Judging of it from my own experience, I should
say it was a good army. Napoleon laid it down as an axiom that your
enemy never ought to be permitted to get away from you--never ought
to be allowed to feel, even for a moment, that he had shaken you off.
What tactics the Belgian Army might adopt under other conditions I am