sy presently.

In the matter of slavish imitation, man is the monkey's superior all the
time. The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not
interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection,
but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor's opinion is and
slavishly adopt it. A generation ago, I found out that the latest review
of a book was pretty sure to be just a reflection of the _earliest_
review of it; that whatever the first reviewer found to praise or
censure in the book would be repeated in the latest reviewer's report,
with nothing fresh added. Therefore more than once I took the precaution
of sending my book, in manuscript, to Mr. Howells, when he was editor of
the "Atlantic Monthly," so that he could prepare a review of it at
leisure. I knew he would say the truth about the book--I also knew that
he would find more merit than demerit in it, because I already knew that
that was the condition of the book. I allowed no copy of it to go out to
the press until after Mr. Howells's notice of it had appeared. That book
was always safe. There wasn't a man behind a pen in all America that had
the courage to find anything in the book which Mr. Howells had not
found--there wasn't a man behind a pen in America that had spirit enough
to say a brave and original thing about the book on his own
responsibility.

I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama,
is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real
value--certainly no large value. When Charles Dudley Warner and I were
about to bring out "The Gilded Age," the editor of the "Daily Graphic"
persuaded me to let him have an advance copy, he giving me his word of
honor that no notice of it would appear in his paper until after the
"Atlantic Monthly" notice should have appeared. This reptile published a
review of the book within three days afterward. I could not really
complain, because he had only given me his word of honor as security; I
ought to have required of him something substantial. I believe his
notice did not deal mainly with the merit of the book, or the lack of
it, but with my moral attitude toward the public. It was charged that I
had used my reputation to play a swindle upon the public; that Mr.
Warner had written as much as half of the book, and that I had used my
name to float it and give it currency; a currency--so the critic
averred--which it could not have acquired without