And the reason we read on is not because we love the indecent, or because we crave the disgusting, although I believe Burke hints at the contrary, but simply because the writing down of these unbecoming things convinces us that the man is honest and that the confession is genuine. In short we come to the conclusion that any man who deliberately puts himself in such a bad light—caring not a fig either for our approbation or our censure—is no sham. And there you have it! _We want honesty in literature._ The great orator always shows a dash of contempt for the opinions of his audience, and the great writer is he who loses self consciousness and writes himself down as he is, for at the last analysis all literature is a confession. The Ishmaelites who purvey culture by the ton, and issue magazines that burden the mails—study very carefully the public palate. They know full well that a “confession” is salacious: it is an exposure. A confession implies something that is peculiar, private and distinctly different from what we are used to. It is a removing the veil, a making plain things that are thought and performed in secret. And so we see articles on “The Women Who Have Influenced Me,” “The Books that Have Made Me,” “My Literary Passions,” etc. But like the circus bills, these titles call for animals that the big tent never shows; and this perhaps is well, for otherwise ’twould fright the ladies. Yes, I frankly admit that these “confessions” suit the constituency of _The Ladies’ Home Journal_ better than the truth; and although its editor be a Jew, the fact that the writers of his confessions practice careful concealment of the truth that they have hands, senses, eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions, is a wise commercial stroke. You can prick them and they do not bleed, tickle them and they do not laugh, poison them and they do not die; simply because they are only puppets parading as certain virtues, and these virtues the own particular brand in which the subscribers delight. That excellent publication, _The Forum_, increased its circulation by many thousand when it ran a series of confessions of great men wherein these great men made sham pretense of laying their lives bare before the public gaze. Nothing was told that did not redound to the credit of the confessor. The “Formative Influences” of sin, error and blunders were carefully concealed or calmly waived. The lack of good faith was as apparent in these articles as the rouge on the cheek of a courtesan: the color is genuine and the woman not dead, that’s all. And the loss lies in this: These writers—mostly able men—sell their souls for a price, and produce a literature that lives the length of life of a moth, whereas they might write for immortality. Instead of inspiring the great, they act as clowns to entertain the rabble.