The world may be perverse, but you have to take it as it is. The world may be childish, but none of us will live to see it grow up. If the world thinks you write with the honest and understandable object of making a living it attributes no ulterior motive to you. The world says: “John Smith, the butcher, sells me beefsteak in order to buy Mrs. Smith a new hat and the little Smiths shoes.” The world buys the steaks and relishes them. But if John Smith tells the world and his wife every time they come to his shop: “I am selling you this large, juicy steak to give you good red blood and make you Fit,” then the world and his wife are resentful and say: “We think we don’t like your large, juicy steaks. We are red blooded enough to have our own preferences. We will just go on down the street to the delicatessen--we mean the Liberty food shop--and buy some de-Hohenzollernized frankfurters, the well-known Liberty sausage. To hell with the Kaiser!” And so John Smith merely makes money. Oh, yes, he makes money; a large, juicy steak is a large, juicy steak no matter how deadly the good intent in selling it. But John Smith is defeated in his real purpose. He does not furnish the world and his wife with the red corpuscles he yearned to give them. 9 At this juncture we seem to hear exasperated cries of this character: “What do you mean by saying that an author must write for money first and last and yet must have a stern moral purpose? How can the two be reconciled? Why must he think of money until he begins to write and never after he begins to write? We understand why the moral object must not obtrude itself, but why need it be there at all?” Can a man serve two masters? Can he serve money and morality? Foolish question No. 58,914! He not only can but he always does when his work is good. A painter--a good painter--is a man who burns to enrich the world with his work and is determined to make the world pay him decently for it. A good sculptor is a man who has gritted his teeth with a resolution to give the world certain beautiful figures for which the world must reward him--or he will know the reason why! A good corset manufacturer is a man who is filled with an almost holy yearning to make people more shapely and more comfortable than he found them--and he is fanatically resolved that they shall acknowledge his achievement by making him rich! For that’s the whole secret. How is a man to know that he has painted great portraits or landscapes or carved lovely monuments or made thousands shapelier and more easeful if not by the money they paid him? How is an author to know that he has amused or instructed thousands if not by the size of his royalty checks? By hearsay? By mind reading? By plucking the petals of a daisy--“They love me. They love me not”?