"Of course it will have to dry before it's put on sale." "I should think so. Listen to me, Frederick Erlcort: you're going crazy." "I've sometimes thought so: crazy with conceit and vanity and arrogance. Who am I that I should set up for a critical bookstore-keeper? What is the Republic of Letters, anyway? A vast, benevolent, generous democracy, where one may have what one likes, or a cold oligarchy where he is compelled to take what is good for him? Is it a restricted citizenship, with a minority representation, or is it universal suffrage?" "Now," Margaret Green said, "you are talking sense. Why didn't you think of this in the beginning?" "Is it a world, a whole earth," he went on, "where the weeds mostly outflourish the flowers, or is it a wretched little florist's conservatory where the watering-pot assumes to better the instruction of the rain which falls upon the just and the unjust? What is all the worthy family of asses to do if there are no thistles to feed them? Because the succulent fruits and nourishing cereals are better for the finer organisms, are the coarser not to have fodder? No; I have made a mistake. Literature is the whole world; it is the expression of the gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, and it is the pleasure of the gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, as well as the expression and the pleasure of the wise, the fine, the elect. Let the multitude have their truck, their rubbish, their rot; it may not be the truck, the rubbish, the rot that it would be to us, or may slowly and by natural selection become to certain of them. But let there be no artificial selection, no survival of the fittest by main force--the force of the spectator, who thinks he knows better than the creator of the ugly and the beautiful, the fair and foul, the evil and good." "Oh, _now_ if the Intellectual Club could hear you!" Margaret Green said, with a long, deep, admiring suspiration. "And what are you going to do with your critical bookstore?" "I'm going to sell it. I've had an offer from the author of that best-seller--I've told you about him. I was just trying to censor that magazine while I was thinking it over. He's got an idea. He's going to keep it a critical bookstore, but the criticism is to be made by universal suffrage and the will of the majority. The latest books will be put to a vote; and the one getting the greatest number of votes will be the first offered for sale, and the author will receive a free passage to Europe by the southern route." "The southern route!" Margaret mused. "I've never been that way. It must be delightful." "Then come with _me_! _I'm_ going." "But how can I?" "By marrying me!"