I can never decide which is the more annoying to a writer: to have people elaborately ignore the fact that he writes and has written, or to have them assume that he can’t talk about, and isn’t interested in, anything but books in general and his own in particular. The happy medium is conversationally discovered by only a very few, but this no doubt is the case with almost all happy mediums. It isn’t in the least disconcerting to meet a person who is quite unaware of the fact that you are the clever Mr. Snooks, author of “The Swill Barrel: A Story of To-day.” Indeed, when your new acquaintance has not even heard of either you or your latest work, you may be able to have with him a perfectly rational and agreeable conversation. But there is a type of person who has read “The Swill Barrel” with interest, who knows you wrote it, and who for some cryptic reason never alludes to it or betrays the fact that he realizes you are the clever Mr. Snooks. This is really most trying. You know that he knows; he knows that you know that he knows, and you both somewhat consciously talk about other things--he, because of an utterly misguided idea that it is “in better taste” not to speak of a book to its author, and you, because, under the circumstances, you would rather die than admit you recognized a pen when you saw it reposing on a desk. To refrain from speaking to a writer of his books because you think it in better taste not to, because “he must be so tired of having people talk to him about that book,” is to display a not particularly keen or sympathetic understanding of human nature. A writer, whether he be a novelist, a historian, a writer of essays, a writer of editorials, a poet, a reporter, a message indicting President of the United States, or the secretary of a charitable organization, invariably hopes that what he writes will be read; that it will please, amuse, instruct, inform, divert,--that, in a word, it will _interest_ somebody, or rather, a group of somebodies. With many writers the commercial aspect of the transaction is, of course, always prominent, but their commercial success depends, after all, upon their ability to charm. Once having grasped the pen and set out to do any of these things, it is only human and natural to be gratified on learning that you have succeeded, and if the people you from time to time meet don’t tell you that you have, you remain in dreadful doubt. To the ears of a writer no music on earth is sweeter than intelligent praise, and even praise that is not intelligent is sweet if it has the ring of sincerity. I remember once taking in to dinner a young girl who assured me that she had very much enjoyed a certain story of mine because it had made her “cry and cry and cry.” Most insincerely, as I knew which story it must have been, I asked her the name of it. She thereupon adorably declared that she didn’t remember the name, she couldn’t recall where she had come across it, and she had