the materials of a great novel, although he may have accumulated
them. The novelist, then, is a man of letters who is like a man
of business in the necessity of preparation for his calling,
though he does not pay store-rent, and may carry all his affairs
under his hat, as the phrase is. He alone among men of letters
may look forward to that sort of continuous prosperity which
follows from capacity and diligence in other vocations; for
story-telling is now a fairly recognized trade, and the
story-teller has a money-standing in the economic world. It is
not a very high standing, I think, and I have expressed the
belief that it does not bring him the respect felt for men in
other lines of business. Still our people cannot deny some
consideration to a man who gets a hundred dollars a thousand
words. That is a fact appreciable to business, and the man of
letters in the line of fiction may reasonably feel that his place
in our civilization, though he may owe it to the women who form
the great mass of his readers, has something of the character of
a vested interest in the eyes of men. There is, indeed, as yet
no conspiracy law which will avenge the attempt to injure him in
his business. A critic, or a dark conjuration of critics, may
damage him at will and to the extent of their power, and he has
no recourse but to write better books, or worse. The law will do
nothing for him, and a boycott of his books might be preached
with immunity by any class of men not liking his opinions on the
question of industrial slavery or antipaedobaptism. Still the
market for his wares is steadier than the market for any other
kind of literary wares, and the prices are better. The
historian, who is a kind of inferior realist, has something like
the same steadiness in the market, but the prices he can command
are much lower, and the two branches of the novelist's trade are