ain was not
because the public was not ready for the good, but because the public
taste was brutalised by men who stood between the public and the
producers. These middlemen insisted, by the right of more direct
contact, that the public should have what they fancied the public desire
to be.

I sat in Union Square recently with a beggar who studied me, because it
appeared to be my whim to help him with a coin. Back of his temples was
a great story--sumptuous drama and throbbing with the first importance
of life. He did not tell me that story, and I could not draw it from
him. Rather he told me the story that he fancied I would want. There was
a whine in it. He chose to act, and he was not a good actor. His
offering hurt, not because he was filthy and a failure, but because he
lied to himself and to me, because he did not dare to be himself, though
the facts were upon him, eye and brow and mouth. So I did not get his
story, but I got a thrilling picture of the recent generation in
American letters--I, being the public; the truth of his story
representing the producer, and the miserable thing he fancied I was
ready for, being the middleman's part.

All workmen of the last generation--all who would listen--were taught to
bring forth their products with an intervening lie between the truth and
their expression--the age of advertising heavy in all production.

I recall from those days what was to me a significant talk with an
American novelist who wanted sales, who was willing to sacrifice all but
the core of his character to get sales, and who found himself at that
time in a challenging situation. As he expressed it:

"Along about page two hundred in the copy of the novel I am on, the
woman's soul wakes up."

"A woman's novel?" I asked.

"Meant to be," said he. "Study of a woman all through. Begins as a
little girl--different, you know--sensitive, does a whole lot of
thinking that her family doesn't follow. Tries to tell 'em at first, but
finds herself in bad. Then keeps quiet for years--putting on power and
beauty in the good old way of bumps and misunderstanding. She's pure
white fire presently--body and brain and something else asleep. She
wants to be a mother, but the ghastly sordidness of the love stories of
her sisters to this enactment, frightens her from men and marriage as
the world conducts it----"

"I follow you," said I.

"Well, I'm not going to do the novel here for you," he added. "You
wouldn't think