them. I will tell the publisher how to do so in this case.

Let him consider what books he buys himself, what books his wife buys;
what books his eldest son, his grandmother, his Aunt Jane, his old
father, his butler (if he runs to one), his most intimate friend, and
his curate buy. He will find that not one of these people buys Jinks.
Most of them will talk Jinks, and if Jinks writes a play, however dull,
they will probably go and see it once; but they draw the line at buying
Jinks's books--and I don't blame them.

The moral is very simple. You yourselves are "The Public," and if you
will watch your own habits you will find that the economic explanation
of a hundred things becomes quite clear.

I have seen the same thing in the offices of a newspaper. Some simple
truth of commanding interest to this country, involving no attack upon
any rich man, and therefore not dangerous under our laws, comes up for
printing. It is discussed in the editor's room. The editor says, "Yes,
of course, we know it is true, and of course it is important, but the
Public would not stand it."

I remember one newspaper office of my youth in which the Public was
visualized as a long file of people streaming into a Wesleyan chapel,
and another in which the Public was supposed to be made up without
exception of retired officers and maiden ladies, every one of whom was a
communicant of the English Established Church, every one of good birth,
and yet every one devoid of culture.

Without the least doubt each of these absurd symbols haunted the brain
of each of the editors in question. The editor of the first paper would