The intimation given above, that Lowell could not quite afford the luxury of being a bystander in his old age, reminds us how close he sailed to the wind throughout his life, yet how faithfully he kept off the reefs of debt. At times he had enough to live on comfortably; when he could not live what is called comfortably, he simply drew in, and at least knew not the discomfort of living beyond his means. He had not now the resources of his professorship, and he was fain to increase the income which his small estate and his copyrights brought him by such tasks as the Introduction we have considered, and other more congenial literary labors. His reputation, fortunately, had now turned capital so far as the quick assets of his writing went. He could command good prices from editors, but by a not uncommon fortune periodical work yielded him much better return than his accumulating books. In a letter written to Thomas Hughes, 10 January, 1887, he makes this frank statement of his affairs: “Rejoice with me that I am getting popular in my old age, and hope to pay my this year’s trip to the dear old Home without defrauding my grandchildren.[98] I get twenty-five cents, I think it is, on copies [of “Democracy”] sold during the first eight months after publication, and then it goes into my general copyright, for which I am paid £400 a year. Not much after nearly fifty years of authorship, but enough to keep me from the almshouse.” His friends sometimes chided him for not reckoning in his price the worth of his name, but he had it not in him to drive sharp bargains. Still, now and then he braced himself, as when he wrote to a friendly editor respecting a poem he had sent him: “Another magazine would have given me----. I am not speaking of intrinsic but of commercial values, of course. I think one ought to make hay while the sun shines, and mine, after a good deal of cloudy weather, seems to be shining now. As I don’t know how long this meteoric phenomenon is to last, I must be diligent with my windrows and cocks that my crop may be in the mow before a change of weather. As an author, you will sympathize with me, while as editor, you will ask me blandly how flint-skins are quoted in the last prices current. I fancy you with that dual expression of countenance typified by Hamlet as ‘one dropping and one auspicious eye’--only I see that I have got the epithets in the wrong order for the metre.”