For instance, some years ago Gen. Lew Wallace wrote a story entitled “Ben-Hur,” which sold fairly for a little while, but made no great excitement in the literary world. Fortunately for the author and the book, which certainly was an original and meritorious production, Gen. Wallace had an immense host of personal friends who little by little had the book brought to their notice; they read it and talked about it, until finally, by this unsolicited and unpaid advertising, his story became famous and is now in its third hundredth thousand of circulation, with a promise of going on perhaps indefinitely. Two years ago Mr. Edward Bellamy wrote his “Looking Backward.” It was a thoughtful, able story, touching many of the nearest interests of humanity, but it sold only a few thousand copies, and seemed making its way to the backs of booksellers’ shelves, when two or three essays upon the general subject recalled attention to it. The people of a single city--which, of course, was Boston--took it up first as a fad, and afterwards as a serious study, and now the book is in general demand and promises to renew and widely stimulate public discussion of a very old subject which must come to the surface once in a little while until perhaps it becomes a recognized principle of human conduct and existence. These are merely two of many books of great value, or at least great interest, which have been saved from the general literary deluge by means which seem merely accidental. Of the many which have been lost perhaps irrevocably the public has no idea. Hawthorne himself, to whom allusion has already been made, was not read one-twentieth as much by the people of his own day as now. Carlyle, who probably is more read in America than in Europe, owes his popularity here and the great sale of his works to the personal efforts of his friend, Mr. Emerson, who insisted that the book should be published in this country, but who would not have succeeded had not his own publishers had reasons for wishing to oblige him personally. These facts regarding literature are not peculiar to America. Many years ago an Englishman named Charles Wells wrote a dramatic poem which did not pass its first edition of a few hundred copies. About a quarter of a century later Swinburne chanced upon a copy of the book, and wrote a review of it, which set all lovers of dramatic poetry to looking for the poem itself, and now it is making its way through edition after edition. Only ten years ago Browning’s latest long poem, whatever it may have been, was refused successively by nearly all reputable American publishers, yet the Browning craze is now a matter of history.