t and all-powerful principle of
love, service, and helpfulness for all mankind.

Is it your ambition to become a great _writer?_ Very good. But remember
that unless you have something to give to the world, something you feel
mankind must have, something that will aid them in their march upward
and onward, unless you have some service of this kind to render, then
you had better be wise, and not take up the pen; for, if your object in
writing is merely fame or money, the number of your readers may be
exceedingly small, possibly a few score or even a few dozen may be a
large estimate.

What an author writes is, after all, the sum total of his life, his
habits, his characteristics, his experiences, his purposes. _He never
can write more than he himself is_. He can never pass beyond his
limitations; and unless he have a purpose higher than writing merely for
fame or self-aggrandizement, he thereby marks his own limitations, and
what he seeks will never come. While he who writes for the world,
because he feels he has something that it needs and that will be a help
to mankind, if it _is_ something it needs, other things being equal,
that which the other man seeks for directly, and so never finds, will
come to him in all its fulness. This is the way it comes, and this way
only. _Mankind cares nothing for you until you have shown that you care
for mankind._

Note this statement from the letter of a now well-known writer, one
whose very first book met with instant success, and that has been
followed by others all similarly received. She says, "I never thought of
writing until two years and a half ago, when, in order to disburden my
mind of certain thoughts that clamored for utterance, I produced," etc.
In the light of this we cannot wonder at the remarkable success of her
very first and all succeeding books. She had something she felt the
world needed and must have; and, with no thought of self, of fame, or of
money, she gave it. The world agreed with her; and, as she was large
enough to seek for neither, it has given her both.

Note this also: "I write for the love of writing, not for money or
reputation. The former I have without exertion, the latter is not worth
a pin's point in the general economy of the vast universe. Work done for
the love of working brings its own reward far more quickly and surely
than work done for mere payment." This is but the formulated statement
of what all the world's greatest writers and author