"Once I was with some Jewish actors, friends of mine, when a long-bearded, old-fashioned Israelite came in to offer them a play that he had written for production. It was such a touching, thrilling story, the old man said, that it made him weep every time he read it--weep like a child over the sad complications of the characters in his play. Oh, if he could only see it performed, it would melt, it would break his heart. Oh, if the actors would only take it! And as he began to read parts of the first act we actually saw tears in his eyes. There you have it. What Dickens, what Tolstoy, what Perez, what Gordin could probably not do for this man, he had done for himself. His own writings made him weep. Honestly, now," Keidansky broke out violently, "don't you enjoy your own effusions?" I admitted that they often gave me pleasure, and that at other times I felt strongly disappointed over them. "Sometimes," I said, "I am puzzled and cannot account how I have done certain things. I say to myself that I must have been drunk to have been so witty; or I imagine that I must have been in the company of bright people to have been so dull. Often as I read I think that my stomach was out of order to make me so thoughtful. And again I am sure that I was awfully hungry to have been so ingenious." I confessed that I found it quite possible to overlook and forgive the faults of my own compositions, and that on the whole they were not infrequently a source of pleasure to me. I ventured to say that I also enjoyed a few things that other people have written. "Well," said Keidansky, and then he became silent for awhile. "Immortal works are good enough to kill time," he said after a pause; "but my own writings for real, downright enjoyment, every time. At the occasion of a big convention or political gathering in a certain city the newspaper correspondents, I am told, present a striking scene as they assemble in the lobby of their hotel when the newspapers arrive. Each man rushes to the news-stand and buys 'his paper,' and loses not a minute before reading his own report. There they sit all together, oblivious even of a good piece of news, should it happen to be near them, each one buried in his newspaper, intently reading his complete account of the stormy proceedings, and many of them cursing and swearing at the stupid editors, 'who left out the best things.' Editors are always stupid and always leave out the best things; but if they didn't they would be idiots. My point, however, is that this scene shows how much people enjoy their own writings. Each author has at least one great admirer. "And this is saying nothing of the gratification of writing, of the thrills of pleasure one feels, when a burst of inspiration breaks upon him, of the great, unutterable moments of exultation when a new heaven of thoughts opens before one's mind, of the joys of perpetuating the evanescent and the fleeting."