r one week.

Some hysterical publisher may exclaim, "If you think we are rascals, you
had better not deal with us." Ask him what he would think of the
president and the cashier of a national bank if they said to the
examiner, "You have come here to insult us by implying that we would
steal the depositors' money. We resent such treatment; we are honest."

"Why, then, do you object to a careful inspection of your methods?" asks
the examiner.

"Because it throws suspicion on us," is the reply.

"Are you aware that officials with reputations quite as good as yours
are now embezzlers in foreign lands? I want to remove from you the
temptation of making money in that way, so that nothing may rest heavily
on your consciences in the great hereafter."

"Nevertheless, we object to an examination."

"Then I had better at once go over your accounts thoroughly. I shall
probably be here several days."

History tells us that for a long time the English Parliament forbade any
newspaper to publish a line of what was said there. A disobedient editor
was speedily imprisoned. The members desired to receive bribes for their
votes in as many cases as possible. If a member could keep his
constituents in ignorance of the way he voted, he could often make money
by voting in opposition to their interests. Of course, he dreaded to
have the newspapers turn the light on his record, and he developed many
remarkable arguments against such privileges on the part of the press.
When more light streams in on certain publishers' methods, authors may
then be able to select better men to represent them.

It has been said that the jealousy of authors is such as to keep them
from working in harmony; that authors who have won their spurs have a
supreme contempt for one who has not; that they omit no opportunity of
indulging in sarcasm at his expense; that they would not throw him a
plank if he were drowning, unless they could so throw it as to strike
him on the head. If this were so, they would not differ much from the
world in general, for it will not give quarter to any man who cannot
claim it by his own might. But the case of Mr. Besant, the president of
the English Society, disproves these sweeping statements against
authors. He stands among the foremost of living novelists, and yet he is
willing to spend a great deal of his valuable time to assist a writer
just beginning to climb the tiresome ladder. This pure and undefiled
religion of being willi