ause it is good work out of place, and not
intrinsically bad, the task of reconstruction wants almost as much time
as the production; and then, when all seems done, comes the anxious and
endless process of revision. These drawbacks reduce the earning capacity
of what I may call the high-cost man of letters in such measure that an
author whose name is known everywhere, and whose reputation is
commensurate with the boundaries of his country, if it does not transcend
them, shall have the income, say, of a rising young physician, known to a
few people in a subordinate city.

In view of this fact, so humiliating to an author in the presence of a
nation of business men like ours, I do not know that I can establish the
man of letters in the popular esteem as very much of a business man,
after all. He must still have a low rank among practical people; and he
will be regarded by the great mass of Americans as perhaps a little off,
a little funny, a little soft! Perhaps not; and yet I would rather not
have a consensus of public opinion on the question; I think I am more
comfortable without it.

III.

There is this to be said in defence of men of letters on the business
side, that literature is still an infant industry with us, and, so far
from having been protected by our laws, it was exposed for ninety years
after the foundation of the republic to the vicious competition of stolen
goods. It is true that we now have the international copyright law at
last, and we can at least begin to forget our shame; but literary
property has only forty-two years of life under our unjust statutes, and
if it is attacked by robbers the law does not seek out the aggressors and
punish them, as it would seek out and punish the trespassers upon any
other kind of property; it leaves the aggrieved owner to bring suit
against them, and recover damages, if he can. This may be right enough
in itself; but I think, then, that all property should be defended by
civil suit, and should become public after forty-two years of private
tenure. The Constitution guarantees us all equality before the law, but
the law-makers seem to have forgotten this in the case of our literary
industry. So long as this remains the case, we cannot expect the best
business talent to go into literature, and the man of letters must keep
his present low grade among business men.

As I have hinted, it is but a little while that he has had any standing
at all. I may say that it