conditions of hucksters because they are imposed upon poets. If
it will serve to make my meaning a little clearer we will suppose
that a poet has been crossed in love, or has suffered some real
sorrow, like the loss of a wife or child. He pours out his
broken heart in verse that shall bring tears of sacred sympathy
from his readers, and an editor pays him a hundred dollars for
the right of bringing his verse to their notice. It is perfectly
true that the poem was not written for these dollars, but it is
perfectly true that it was sold for them. The poet must use his
emotions to pay his provision bills; he has no other means;
society does not propose to pay his bills for him. Yet, and at
the end of the ends, the unsophisticated witness finds the
transaction ridiculous, finds it repulsive, finds it shabby.
Somehow he knows that if our huckstering civilization did not at
every moment violate the eternal fitness of things, the poet's
song would have been given to the world, and the poet would have
been cared for by the whole human brotherhood, as any man should
be who does the duty that every man owes it.

The instinctive sense of the dishonor which money-purchase does
to art is so strong that sometimes a man of letters who can pay
his way otherwise refuses pay for his work, as Lord Byron did,
for a while, from a noble pride, and as Count Tolstoy has tried
to do, from a noble conscience. But Byron's publisher profited
by a generosity which did not reach his readers; and the Countess
Tolstoy collects the copyright which her husband foregoes; so
that these two eminent instances of protest against business in
literature may be said not to have shaken its money basis. I
know of no others; but there may be many that I am culpably
ignorant of. Still, I doubt if there are enough to affect the