ize for the best novel or for the
best play, but if there was a Pulitzer prize for the greatest human
goat nobody else would be in the running. I have not got
goat-feathers by the dozen or by the pound--I have them by the
bale. I estimate that if all my goat-feathers were placed end to
end they would reach from the bread line to the poor-house.

It is just possible that by this time you may gather that I have a
grouch on myself. If so, you are right. To-day I am forty-nine
years and six months old, and as a bright and shining literary
light I am exactly where I was twelve years ago. I am twelve years
older and have that much less time in which to complete the joy of
making good as one of the great American authors. Presently the
infirmities of age will begin to gnaw at me, the moths will ruin my
flossy collection of goat-feathers, all those who now pat me on the
back because they can make use of me free of charge will forget
that I am alive, and my executors will shake their heads and say,
"Ain't it too bad he left so little!"

Distraction isn't really good for a man if he wants to reach a
goal. No salesman ever got very far by carrying too many side
lines. The poorest sort of monopoly for any man to undertake is a
monopoly of goat-feathers.

No man in the world had a better chance to make himself the Great
American Humorist than I had when I wrote "Pigs is Pigs." I had a
good, solid foundation of fairly good humorous work under it and
the little story had a wonderful success. The thing for me to have
done then was to stick to humor, regardless of anything. I have
written dainty stories, sympathetic stories, serious stories, all
kinds of stories, but not many humorous stories. It is surprising
how often editors have had to announce "A story that shows this
famous humorist in an entirely new vein."

Taking literature as a business, I can say that a humorist should
have no "new vein." Neither does a plumber succeed as a plumber by
spending a large share of his working hours making violins. No one
ever succeeds by allowing himself to be deflected from the most
important business of life, which is making the most of the best
that is in him. Even a cow does better if she sticks close to the
business of eating grass and chewing the cud. When she starts in to
learn to whistle like a catbird and to flit from field to field
like a butterfly it is safe to say she is no longer a success in
life. When a cow strays from plain