course, is selfish and personal--not wholly selfish either,
I think. I threw down the _Atlantic_ for this reason: (Consider the
history of its editors) Lowell[5] complained bitterly that he was
never rewarded properly for the time and work he did; Fields was
(in a way) one of its owners; it was sold out from under Howells,
etc., etc. I might (probably should) have been at the mercy
completely of owners some day who would have dismissed me for a
younger man. Nearly all hired editors suffer this fate. My good
friends in Boston were sincere in thinking that my day of doom
would never come; but they didn't offer me any guarantee--part
ownership, for instance; and the years go swiftly. I could afford,
of my own volition, to leave the _Atlantic_. I couldn't afford to
take permanently the risks that a hired editor must take. Nor
should I ever again have turned my hand to such a task except on a
magazine of my own. I should have sought other employment. There
are many easier and better and more influential things to do--yet;
ten years hence I might have been too old. Harry Houghton[6] has an
old horse thirty years old. I used to see him grazing sometimes and
hear his master's self-congratulatory explanation of his own
kindness to that faithful beast. In the office of Houghton, Mifflin
& Company there is an old man whom I used to see every
day--pensioned, grazing. Then I would go home and see four bright
children. Three of them are now away from home at school; and the
four cost a pretty penny to educate. My income had been the same
for ten years-or very nearly the same. If I was a "magic" editor, I
confess I didn't see the magic; and there is no power under Heaven
or in it that can prove to me that I ought to keep on making
magazines as a hired man--without the common security of permanent
service for lack of which nearly all my predecessors lost their
chance.

But this is not all, nor half. A man ought to express himself,
ought to live his own life, say his own little say, before silence
comes. The "say" may be bad--a mere yawp, and silence might be more
becoming. But the same argument would make a man dissatisfied with
his own nose if it happened to be ugly. It's _his_ nose, and he
must content himself. So it's _his_ yawp and he must let it go.

I'