we have done in that
sort, whose books represent our life with singular force and singular
insight, and whose equipment for his art, through study, travel, and
the world, is of the rarest. He has a strong, robust, manly style; his
stories are well knit, and his characters are of the flesh and blood
complexion which we know in our daily experience; and yet he has failed
to achieve one of the first places in our literature; if I named his
name here, I am afraid that it would be quite unknown to the greatest
part of my readers. I have never been able to account for his want of
success, except through the fact that his stories did not please women,
though why they did not, I cannot guess. They did not like them for
the same reason that they did not like Dr. Fell; and that reason was
quite enough for them. It must be enough for him, I am afraid; but I
believe that if this author had been writing in a country where men
decided the fate of books, the fate of his books would have been
different.

The man of letters must make up his mind that in the United States the
fate of a book is in the hands of the women. It is the women with us
who have the most leisure, and they read the most books. They are far
better educated, for the most part, than our men, and their tastes, if
not their minds, are more cultivated. Our men read the newspapers, but
our women read the books; the more refined among them read the
magazines. If they do not always know what is good, they do know what
pleases them, and it is useless to quarrel with their decisions, for
there is no appeal from them. To go from them to the men would be
going from a higher to a lower court, which would be honestly surprised
and bewildered, if the thing were possible. As I say, the author of
light literature, and often the author of solid literature, must resign
himself to obscurity unless the ladies choose to recognize him. Yet it
would be impossible to forecast their favor for this kind or that. Who
could prophesy it for another, who guess it for himself? We must
strive blindly for it, and hope somehow that our best will also be our
prettiest; but we must remember at the same time that it is not the
ladies' man who is the favorite of the ladies.

There are of course a few, a very few, of our greatest authors, who
have striven forward to the first place in our Valhalla without the
help of the largest reading-class among us; but I should say that these
were chie