"But I am carrying my generalizations too far: it is my purpose rather to narrate for your benefit some cases of individual hardships on the part of authors that have come under my own observation. My friend, the accomplished magazinist of whom I spoke, wins the wage of a grocery clerk; and as nothing could induce him to leave his profession--it is his life--he will continue to eat the bread of poverty all his days. I know authors who have fared far worse than this--who would be glad to exchange all the fame their books have brought them for money to meet the obligations incurred in their publication. I have a friend who was not a tyro in authorship when he came up to New York with a newly-completed book seeking a publisher. He first gave his manuscript to a leading publishing-firm, which, after keeping it three weeks for inspection, informed him in the politest manner that their reader did not advise them to undertake the publication. He then sought another publisher equally eminent, who in due time consented to take the book on the following terms: He would publish it, give it the benefit of the firm's imprint and push its sale through the trade for a certain commission, the author to pay the entire cost of the stereotype-plates when delivered, and also the cost of printing and binding the first edition. The publisher admitted the hardship to authors of this plan, but declared that since the decline of the book-trade it had been almost universally pursued by publishers as a means of ensuring themselves against loss. But, as it happened, my friend succeeded in making better terms with another publisher. In the course of their conversation the latter remarked that he could offset the author's experience with a much severer one, and proceeded to relate the following incident, which he declared to be strictly true: Not long ago a well-known lady writer made arrangements with a large New York publishing-house to publish a book for her. In return for the firm's name on the title-page she agreed to pay the entire cost of the plates and of the first edition of two thousand copies, and the usual per cent. commission for introducing the book, and in addition not to call for any settlement of accounts until the entire edition was exhausted. She did this the more readily as she supposed that the books would be sold in two or three months at the farthest. Time flew on, the book-trade was dull, and the last half of the second year was approaching ere fifteen hundred copies had been sold. She was in urgent need of the money, and to obtain it sent a buyer into the market who bought for her the remaining five hundred copies, paying the publisher his commission on them: in this way she secured payment for the entire edition.