Nearly twenty years of authorship have shown me much and sad experience; but nothing ever revealed to me the low estimation in which authors are held by publishers, so much as a simple fact, mentioned some time ago, in Chambers' Journal, but which was witnessed by myself. I was in an eminent publisher's, when the principal addressed the head clerk thus:-- _Principal._--"Mr. ---- wishes to open an account with us. He is a publisher of some standing, and seems getting on very well; I think we may do it." _Clerk._--(Drawing himself up in an attitude of ineffable surprise)--"_Sir! he is an author!_" _Principal._--"Oh! that alters the question entirely. I did not know that. Open an account? Certainly not! certainly not!" Is there an author who hears this, who does not ask himself the question, why they who ought to be regarded only with reverence, and whose talents should invest them with a panoply of salutary fear, should thus be the objects of uttermost contempt? But take another anecdote. The publisher of a celebrated review and myself were conversing on literary matters, when a very popular author was announced, who begged a word with the publisher, and they retired together. Presently the publisher came back. _Publisher._--"We were talking of the relative merits of authors and publishers just now." _Myself._--"Yes." _Publisher._--"Well, you authors regard yourselves as the salt of the earth. It is you who are the great men of the world; you move society, and propel civilization; we publishers are but good pudding-eaters, and paymasters to you." _Myself._--"True enough; but _you_ think that you are the master manufacturers, and we authors the poor devil artisans who really have no right to more than artisan wages." _Publisher._--"Ay, if you will take them as wages, and often before they are earned. Grant that you are the salt of the earth; methinks the salt has wonderfully lost its savor, when it has to come with a manuscript in one hand, and holds out the other for the instant pay, or the kettle can not boil. See, there now is a man just gone, that will be a name these five hundred years hence; yet what does he come to me for? For a sovereign! I tell you candidly, that if no hero can be a hero to his valet de chambre, neither can an author be a hero to his publisher, when he comes _in forma pauperis_ every day before him. For the life of me I can not maintain an admiration of a man, when, like a rat, he is always nibbling at my purse-strings, and especially when I know--and what publisher does not know it?--that give the coin before the work is done, and it never is done. I content myself with things as I find them, and I leave all homage to the reader." Let the whole body of authors lay these things duly to heart, and there will not long be an association for the maintenance of its honor and its interests in every profession but theirs.