as genuine and sincere, and I believe
that which cost Kipling so much will bring England and America closer
together. I have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection
and respect between the two countries. I hope it will continue to grow,
and, please God, it will continue to grow. I trust we authors will leave
to posterity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friendship between
England and America that will count for much. I will now confess that I
have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a publication. I
have brought it here to lay at your feet. I do not ask your indulgence
in presenting it, but for your applause.

Here it is: "Since England and America may be joined together in
Kipling, may they not be severed in 'Twain.'"

BOOKSELLERS

Address at banquet on Wednesday evening, May 20, 1908, of the
American Booksellers' Association, which included most of the
leading booksellers of America, held at the rooms of the Aldine
Association, New York.

This annual gathering of booksellers from all over America comes
together ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss, business;
therefore I am required to, talk shop. I am required to furnish a
statement of the indebtedness under which I lie to you gentlemen for
your help in enabling me to earn my living. For something over forty
years I have acquired my bread by print, beginning with The Innocents
Abroad, followed at intervals of a year or so by Roughing It, Tom
Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so on. For thirty-six years my books were sold
by subscription. You are not interested in those years, but only in the
four which have since followed. The books passed into the hands of my
present publishers at the beginning of 1900, and you then became the
providers of my diet. I think I may say, without flattering you, that
you have done exceedingly well by me. Exceedingly well is not too strong
a phrase, since the official statistics show that in four years you have
sold twice as many volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my
publishers bound you and them to sell in five years. To your sorrow you
are aware that frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be
five or ten years old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred
copies, and after an added ten or twenty years ceases to sell. But you
sell thousands of my moss-backed old books every year--the youngest of
them being books that