Doubtless he means well, this author. And, in most cases, highly probable it is that his magnanimous sentiments are O. K. all round. For to the minds of what would probably be called "right-thinking" persons is not having a book dedicated to you the equivalent, almost, of having a career yourself? I know a very distinguished American novelist--well, I'll tell you who he is: Booth Tarkington--who has told me this: Time and again he has been relentlessly pursued by some person unknown to him who, in the belief that did he once hear it he would surely use it as material for his next book, wished to tell him the story of his life. This life, according to the communications received by the novelist, was in every case one of the most remarkable ever lived by man. It was, in every case, most extraordinary in, among a variety of other singular things, this: the abounding in it of the most amazing coincidences. And so on, and so on, and so on. One of these romantic personages nailed the novelist somewhere coming out of a doorway one day, and contrived to compel him to sit down and listen to the life story. He was an old, old man, this chap, and firmly convinced that the tale of his many days (as simple, commonplace, dull and monotonous an existence as ever was conceived) was unique. Now he did not want any pay for telling his story; he had no design on any royalty to come from the great book to be made out of it; no, not at all. All he asked--and that, he thought, was fair enough--was that the book be dedicated to him. And so it was with them all, all of those with the remarkable, obscure, romantic, humdrum lives. So much for that. Dedications run the whole gamut of the emotions. A type of author very tonic to the spirit is that one whose soul embraces not merely an individual but which enfolds in its heroic sweep a nation, a people, or some mighty idea. What, for instance, could be more vast in the grandeur of its sweep than this--which I came upon the other day in a modest little volume? "To the Children of Destiny." The Great War, which has wrought so much evil and inspired so much literature, is responsible for a flood of noble, lofty dedications. The merest snooping through a bunch of recent war books turns up, among a multitude more, the following: "To the Mothers of America." "To--the Loyalty and Patriotism--of the--American People." "To the Hour--When the Troops Turn Home." "To All the Men at the Front."