slope of a mountain,
would know how to go and find it, or have even the faintest idea of
how to set about it; but I am one of the possible 20 or 30 who
possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand on that hidden
treasure with a most deadly precision.

And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find
it--just with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a silver miner
and know how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And so
I know the mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte
knows them exteriorly.

And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the
inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two
sessions and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to
know personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the
selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.

And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all
the different kinds of steamboatmen--a race apart, and not like
other folk.

And I was for some years a traveling "jour" printer, and wandered
from city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly.

And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and
was a responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets
--and so I know a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to
be got out of books, but only acquirable by experience.

And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a
fortune on it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that
would make a large book in which a million men would see themselves
as in a mirror; and they would testify and say, Verily, this is not
imagination; this fellow has been there--and after would they cast
dust upon their heads, cursing and blaspheming.

And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General
Grant's) the largest copyright checks this world has seen
--aggregating more than L80,000 in the first year.

And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.

Now then: as the most valuable capital or culture or education
usable in the building of novels is personal experience I ought to
be well equipped for that trade.

I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real,
none of it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.