it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated,
and he will have nobody to blame but himself if he
is. There is no more sin in publishing an entire
volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a candy-store
with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the
customer whether he will injure himself by means of
either, or will derive from them the benefits which
they will afford him if he uses their possibilities
judiciously.
Respectfully
submitted,
the
author.
An address delivered in 1877,
and a review of it twenty-nine years later.
The original speech was delivered at a dinner given
by the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor
of the seventieth anniversary o f the birth
of John Greenleaf Whittier, at the Hotel
Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877.
This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging
up of pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk;
therefore I will drop lightly into history myself.
Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and contemplating
certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded
of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago,
when I had just succeeded in stirring up a little
Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes
were beginning to blow thinly Californiaward.
I started an inspection tramp through the southern
mines of California. I was callow and conceited,
and I resolved to try the virtue of my ‘nom de
guerre’.
I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at
a miner’s lonely log cabin in the foot-hills
of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing
at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty,
barefooted, opened the door to me. When he heard
my ‘nom de guerre’ he looked more dejected
than before. He let me in—pretty
reluctantly, I thought—and after the customary
bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, I took
a pipe. This sorrowful man had not said three
words up to this time. Now he spoke up and said,
in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, “You’re
the fourth—I’m going to move.”
“The fourth what?” said I. “The
fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four
hours—I’m going to move.”
“You don’t tell me!” said I; “who
were the others?” “Mr. Longfellow, Mr.
Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes—consound
the lot!”
You can, easily believe I was interested. I
supplicated—three hot whiskeys did the
rest—and finally the melancholy miner began.
Said he:
