One bleak autumnal morning not many years ago I paid one of my periodical early visits to the library, and had just finished my examination of the literary market when my eye happened to fall on the name of François Coppée printed in about the last place in the world that one would be apt to look for it--namely, in the table of contents of _Harper’s Magazine_. It was signed to a story called “The Rivals,” and although the pages of that story were neither torn by nervous feminine claws nor blackened by grimy hands I began to read it, and as I read New York slipped away from me, the wheezing of the asthmatic patrons of the library became inaudible to me, for I was in Paris with the young poet and his two loves. When I had finished the book I looked up and saw that I was still in the library, for there were the shelves full of what are termed the “leading periodicals of the day,” and two elderly ladies were racing across the room for the new number of _Life_. And then in the fullness of my heart I gave thanks to the great firm of publishers that had dared to violate all the sacred traditions that have been handed down from the Bonnerian to the Johnsonian age of letters and print a story that could make me forget for half an hour that I had a thousand words of “humorous matter” to write before twelve o’clock. It was sad to come back from the _coulisses_ of the Vaudeville and find myself directly opposite the shelf containing the _Chautauquan Magazine_ and within earshot of the rustling of _Harper’s Bazar_; but I turned to my work in a better spirit because of M. Coppée and the Harpers, and I have reason to believe that the quality of the “humorous matter” which I constructed that afternoon was superior in fibre and durability to the ordinary products of my hands. I know that a dealer to whom I occasionally brought a basketful of my wares gave me an order the very next day to serve him once a week regularly thereafter, and as he has been a steady and prompt-paying customer ever since I have special cause to feel grateful to the famous house of Harper for the literary stimulus which the story gave me. I have already alluded to the fact that the pages on which “The Rivals” was printed were not torn and discolored like those containing other much-read and widely discussed romances. It was this circumstance which led me to reflect on the difficulties and discouragement which confront the editor whose ambition it is to give his subscribers fiction of the very best literary quality. In this instance the experiment had been fairly tried and yet at the end of the month the virgin purity of these pages was, to me at least, sadly significant of the fact that Coppée’s delightful work had not met with the appreciation which it deserved.