"I fancy there are few of those active, tireless Americans, who, nevertheless, steal time from their business to read many newspapers and many books, who have heard of an association of men in New York called the Authors' Club. Authors, in their eyes, are apt to seem like inhabitants of a world apart, a world separated by a broad boundary from the sphere of average commercial labor. Authors are, as it were, abstractions; they are heard and not seen. They are heard through their books, which are the concrete essence of themselves; yet the author is, after all, an extremely concrete personage, who strives as hard as anyone for his living, and whose reward is seldom commensurate with his efforts. It is the exceptional great man of literature--the great author being a better illustration than the small one--who is lucky enough to enjoy felicity during his lifetime. "But I did not start out here to make the old argument--which has been so often a fanciful and sentimental argument--against literature as a remunerative profession. My idea was a simple one: To assume that authors are more generally hidden from public view than almost any other class of men, and that, for this reason especially, the least important bit of gossip touching the private doings, goings, and sayings of authors interests, without question, a very large number of people. The writer of a famous novel or poem may walk the length of Broadway, yet remain absolutely a stranger to the crowd among whom he walks. A nobody of a politician passing over the same space would, I am sure, be liberally recognized as a somebody, and not the least sort of a somebody by any means. The stranger to the crowd, however, the author derives practical benefit from the 'charm of mystery.' To be at once celebrated and unknown is for him a desirable condition. His books are read. He piques curiosity. What more could he ask for?