m the more regarded nor disregarded; he will only be less
troubled with birthday books, requests for autographs, and such-like
irritating attentions. From that time, also, it may be, the number of
writers will begin to diminish; for then, it is to be hoped, men will
begin to see that it is better to do the inferior thing well than the
superior thing after a middling fashion. The man who would not rather
be a good shoemaker than a middling author would be no honor to the
shoemakers, and can hardly be any to the authors. I have the comfort
that in this all authors will agree with me, for which of us is now
able to see himself _middling_? Honorable above all honor that
authorship can give is he who can.

It was through some of his old college friends that Tom had thus easily
stepped into the literary profession. They were young men with money
and friends to back them, who, having taken to literature as soon as
they chipped the university shell, were already in the full swing of
periodical production, when Tom, to quote two rather contradictory
utterances of his mother, ruined his own prospects and made Letty's
fortune by marrying her. I can not say, however, that they had found
him remunerative employment. The best they had done for him was to
bring him into such a half sort of connection with a certain weekly
paper that now and then he got something printed in it, and now and
then, with the joke of acknowledging an obligation irremunerable, the
editor would hand him what he called an honorarium, but what in reality
was a five-pound note. When such an event occurred, Tom would feel his
bosom swell with the imagined dignity of supporting a family by
literary labor, and, forgetful of the sparseness of his mother's doles,
who delighted to make the young couple feel the bitterness of
dependence, would immediately, on the strength of it, invite his
friends to supper--not at the lodging where Letty sat lonely, but at
some tavern frequented by people of the craft. It was at such times,
and in the company of men certainly not better than himself, that Tom's
hopes were brightest, and his confidence greatest: therefore such
seasons were those of his highest bliss. Especially, when his sensitive
but poor imagination was stimulated from the nerve-side of the brain,
was Tom in his glory; and it was not the "few glasses of champagne," of
which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king
of fate and poet of the world