So far as any man comes directly in contact with the agencies of organized literature, let him remember that his mind is at stake. They can change you, but you cannot change them, except by changing the public they reflect. The faculties of man are as strong as steel if properly used, but they are like the down on a peach if improperly used. What shall a man take in exchange for his soul? No man has the privilege upon this earth of being more than one person. In this matter of expression, it is the last ten per cent of accuracy that saves or sells you. Talent evaporates as easily as a delegate holds his tongue or a lawyer smiles to a rich man; and the injury is irremediable. Let a man not alter a line or cut a paragraph at the suggestion of an editor. Those are the very words that are valuable. “Ah,” you say, “but I need criticism.” Then go to a critic. Consult the man who is farthest away from this influence, some one who cannot read the magazines, some one who does not have to read them. Your public, when you get one, will qualify the general public; but you must reach it as a whole man. The writer’s course is easy compared to that of the reform politician, because printing is cheap. He will get heard immediately. He covers the whole of the United States while the other is canvassing a ward. Literary self-assertion is as much needed as any of the virtue we pray for in politics. A resonant and unvexed independence makes a man’s words stir the fibres in other men; and it matters little whether you label his words literature or politics. The difficulty in any revolt against custom, the struggle a man has in getting his mind free from the cobwebs of restraint, always turns out to involve financial distress; and this holds true of the writer’s attempt to override the senseless restrictions of the press. The magazines pay handsomely, and pay at once. A writer must earn his bread; a man must support his family. We accept this necessity with such a hearty concurrence, and the necessity itself becomes so sacred, that it seems to imply an answer to all ethical and artistic questions. We almost think that nature will connive at malpractice done in so good a cause as the support of a family. The subject must be looked at more narrowly. The spur of poverty is popularly regarded not only as an excuse for all bad work, but as a prerequisite to all good work. There is a misconception in this wholesale appropriation of a partial truth. The economic laws are valuable and suggestive, but they are founded on the belief that a man will pursue his own business interests exclusively. This is never entirely true even in trade, and the doctrines of the economists become more and more misleading when applied to fields of life where the money motive becomes incidental. The law of supply and demand does not govern the production of sonnets.