this jovial "My boy!" the pious publisher is not at a loss. No! He then says "My dear fellow," in gentle, serious, sympathetic accents. This frequently produces a good effect. It is indeed remarkable what an impression these meaningless, apparently kindly, short phrases have on the weary minds of authors when uttered by the pious publisher. It is ridiculous in a way, but pitiful too. No consciousness of intellectual supremacy will ever eradicate from the human heart the craving for human sympathy, and the biggest author that ever wielded potent pen has no proof-armour against the simple magic of a kindly word. And tired out with long thinking and labour, it may be that sometimes the pious publisher's "dear fellow" hits a sensitive little place in the author's complex mechanism, somewhere about where the tears are (if any author is permitted to have tears), and he becomes dimly soothed by the simple phrase, so soothed as to actually fancy he has found--a friend! And in the little "arrangement" made for his work the pious publisher scores again--heavily, as usual. Needless to say the pious publisher is an exceedingly shrewd business man. His piety distinctly "pays." His "God bless you!" has saved him many an extra twenty or fifty pounds; his "my dear" and "dear fellow" have helped to make suspicious novelists accept without a murmur his statements of their royalties. He knows all this perfectly well. He reads all the poor, pitiful, yet beautiful human weakness of men and women thoroughly, and makes his capital out of it while he can. God, we are told, compassionates human weakness; the pious publisher lives by it. He uses the sad little vanities of the would-be "genius" as so many channels of speculation. He has an agreeable way of reminding the very small writer of the gloriously self-denying manner in which the very great writers managed to exist--those writers of old historic time who served Art for Art's sake, and were content to live upon a crust of bread for the sake of future glory. That noble Crust! The pious publisher wishes all authors would live upon it. "My dear boy," he says, "it is the modern thirst of gold that kills Art. Now you are a true 'artist.'" (Here probably the small writer thus addressed cannot restrain a nervous wriggle of satisfaction.) "Yes, yes! a true artist! I can see that at a glance. To you money weighs as nothing compared with high ambition and attainment." (The small writer is perhaps not quite sure about this, still he is unable to look stern, so he smiles feebly.) "To grind out literature for the mere sake of accumulating cash would be distasteful to a man of your lofty spirit. You were made for better things. The notorieties of the day who allow themselves to be paragraphed and 'boomed' and all the rest of it, and command for the moment large sales, are really mere ephemera. Now, my dear boy, let me advise you not to hamper your evident genius by over-anxiety about money.