I have told in “The Brass Check” the curious story of my own experience with this publishing house; I will repeat it here, so far as it bears on Howells. Ten years ago I was collecting material for my anthology of revolutionary literature, “The Cry for Justice,” and I applied to one or two hundred authors for permission to quote briefly from their writings. Having got the authors’ permission, I then applied to the publishers; whereupon I received from Messrs. Harper and Brothers a letter, forbidding me to quote from any book published by them, even with the author’s permission. I took the trouble to call upon the gentleman who had this matter in charge, and was informed that the firm considered my reputation to be so bad that I would do injury to any author whom I quoted. I had with me a letter from Howells, saying that he would be very glad to be quoted. But no matter; I was not to quote him; neither was I to quote Mark Twain, nor Charles Rann Kennedy, nor H. G. Wells! It happened that Howells’ editorial office was in that same dingy old Franklin Square building, so I took the matter to him. He was courteous and friendly--but he did not feel that it would be proper for him to oppose the objections of his publishers. My plea, that he owed something to a fellow-Socialist, and still more to the movement, did not avail. And lest the reader think that I am unduly prejudiced against the publication department of J. P. Morgan & Company, let me quote a couple of sentences from a letter written to the editor of “Harper’s” Magazine by Lafcadio Hearn: “Your firm is a hundred years behind; ignorant, brutal, mean, absurdly ignorant--incredibly ignorant of what art is, what literature is, what good taste is. But it makes money like pork packeries and butcheries and loan offices.” History has its curious ironies, and this would be one--if it should turn out that Howells, in refusing to be quoted in “The Cry for Justice,” had lost his best chance of being read in the future. And lest this remark be taken for megalomania, let me add that I am not the author of the anthology, merely its editor, and others could have done the job as well, perhaps better. The point is that this is the kind of literature which the future will read. The whirlwinds of social revolution are gathering to sweep the world; and when they have passed, there will be a new generation of clear-eyed young workers, who will look upon the fiction-characters of William Dean Howells with puzzled dismay. Characters so mild and gentle, so tolerant in the presence of intolerable wrong! Characters so very respectable in the getting and spending of their incomes, so anxious in their conformity to pecuniary conventions! The young workers will not be able to imagine themselves in the place of such characters; but will study them as one studies relics in a museum, or queer-shaped insects under a microscope. CHAPTER CII THE EMINENT TANKARD-MAN