buying his work; giving him encouragement, making it possible to live and to write more. I repeat I know this is all mundane and commonplace and unaesthetic, but it's reality. And do they give this encouragement, buy themselves, and let him make his tiny royalty which in turn enables him to live, pass an appreciation on to their friends and induce them to buy? In a fractional proportion of times, yes. In the main, John, whom the writer has worked a year, day and night, to reach, by chance meets his friend Charley. 'By the way,' he remarks, 'I picked up that novel of Blank's lately. It's good, all right, all right; kept me up half the night to finish it. I want you to read it, old man. It's just your style. No use to buy it, though,' he adds hurriedly. 'Drop in sometime and I'll lend it to you.' Of a sudden he remembers. 'Come to think of it, though, I believe just now it's lent to Phil--or was it Dick who took it. The story's a corker and they've both had it.' He thinks again hard and remembers. 'I have it now. Dick gave it to Sam; he told me so. Get it from him yourself. I know you'll like it.' And so the lending goes on so long as the covers hold together. Meanwhile the writer, away off somewhere waiting and hoping and watching the sale, in return for the pleasure he gives John and Charley and Phil and Dick and Sam and the rest, and in consideration of that year of work and weariness and struggle, gets enough perhaps to buy a meal at a Chinese restaurant. This is appreciation, I say, enlightened twentieth century appreciation; and the beauty of it is that every one of that company who get his work for nothing feel that by their praise and by reading his work they've given that writer, who can't possibly know anything about it, all that he could possibly desire." For the first time that evening Armstrong paused to laugh. "Oh, it's humorous, all right, when one stops to consider and appreciate! Just suppose, though, in the name of fair play, some one had suggested to John that he throw that copy of his in the furnace where no one could possibly borrow it, and then go on telling his appreciation. Just supposing some one had suggested that! Do you fancy John would have considered that person wholly sane? And still that writer, besides being an artist, is an animal with a stomach and needs a home to live in, and maybe is human enough to have burdened himself with a wife and--and children--" "Steve, confound it, you've gone on long enough." "I know it--too long." "It doesn't do any good to rail at something you can't help, that no one can help." "Admitted. I'm just talking to myself--and you. It's all the same." "You've never starved yet or gone without clothes, so far as I know."