I doubt if any system, either literary, political, or social--unless it be negro slavery--has ever had a fairer trial in this country than has that of pruning-hook editing, of which I have treated in these pages; and that system may be responsible, in part, for the fact that three quarters of the fiction offered in bookstores to-day is the work of foreign writers, most of whom have been reared in the comparatively free and independent literary atmosphere of Great Britain, and have always addressed their books directly to the public instead of the editors of magazines. It is true that Smith or Mudie, whose influence in the book-trade is almost incalculable, occasionally refuse to circulate a novel out of consideration for the feelings of the “young person,” but such a proceeding is not nearly as disastrous to a writer as the refusal of his manuscript by all the magazines would be to an American. A ton of manuscript makes no more commotion when returned to its authors than the touch of a humming-bird on a lily-petal; but when a book like _Esther Waters_ is cast out of an English circulating library it falls with a crash that is heard throughout the length and breadth of the three kingdoms, while the author and his friends, with a little assistance from the author’s enemies, make the welkin ring with their cries. The recent discussion over “Trilby” and the action of its publishers in cutting out this passage and pruning that have given the public a little insight into the methods in vogue in our large literary establishments--methods which I have tried to explain in this book. The very fact that Mr. Du Maurier’s manuscript stood in need of the pruning-hook is, to me, proof positive that he never sat on the poets’ bench in the _Ledger_ office or practised his profession under the rule of Dr. Holland. It may be that at this very moment a great many American story-readers are asking themselves why it is that native authors who know their trade so well that the magazines will publish anything that they offer should be unable to write a serial equal to that of a gray-haired novice like Mr. Du Maurier, who, I will wager, knows absolutely nothing about the immortal principles which are the very lamps unto the feet of his American contemporaries. I shudder to think of what the world would have lost had the author of “Trilby” gone about his work with the Holland fetters on his wrists, the fear of the gas-fitter in his heart, the awful pruning-hook hanging by a single hair over his head, and the ominous shadow of Robert Bonner falling across the pages of his story. There are other English writers who have “arrived” during the past half-dozen years--a sufficient number, indeed, to make us feel that there must be some deep-seated cause for the comparatively slow progress which our own literature has made in the same time.