GENTLEMEN:--It is very interesting and pleasant to have the critic come at the problem in his mathematical fashion, but that will not settle it. I will tell you what will settle it--the human soul of the creative man; because if he has the creative power and impulse in him it will make no difference to him whether or not a single person in the world reads or understands his book, or appreciates and understands his painting. What could the critic do with Claude Monet thirty-five years ago? What could the critic do with Robert Browning when he appeared? What has the critic done thus far with Walt Whitman, the greatest spiritual democrat this nation has ever produced? This question is not settled by the schools; it is not settled by critics; it is not to be settled by a group of realists or a group of veritists, or the latest group of impressionists. It is to be settled by the creative impulse of the man, first; and second, and always subordinate to the real artist, the public. Now, I am perfectly willing to admit that there has been for the past year or two a revival of what might be called the "shilling shocker" in literature, but it seems to me Professor McClintock entirely overestimates and exaggerates the influence of the "yore and gore" fictionists; and even if it were true that they filled the magazines to the exclusion of Mr. Read [Opie P. Read] and myself-- [Mr. Read: Which they don't:] Which they don't--and if it were true that the pendulum is swinging toward the "shilling shocker," it does not follow that it will be a century before there is a return to the thoughtful study of social life. This romance can die, and these books be as dead as Hugh Conway's "Called Back" in less than ten years. I am perfectly willing to admit all these mutations of taste, but there is something deeper than that. Do you know, I have a notion that the reign of cheap melodrama and farce-comedy on our stage and of the "shilling shocker" during the last two years is due largely to our financial condition. Many of you are business men, and I know how you talk. I ask you to go to see a serious play, and you say: "Well, I will tell you; I am pretty well worn out when business is done, and things are not going just as they should, and I would rather go to the theatre to laugh these days. I don't care to go to the theatre to think." In precisely the same way, when you are called upon, after a hard day of business care and worry, to read a book, and I say to you: "Read Israel Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto'; it is one of the greatest studies of our day," you say: "The fact is, I should go to sleep over it. I must have something that has fighting in it. I want 'yore and gore' fiction this year. Later on, when I get over my business difficulties and get where things are easy with me, I'll try Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto.' I will sit down with my wife and have her read it aloud." There is great significance in this confession as it appears to me.