Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/361

 practical philanthropy. But it is only due to her, in a biographical work published mainly to explain what she is—as opposed to what so many malicious paragraphists have declared her to be—to pay a tribute to her consideration for others, and her desire to make the best use of such worldly possessions as the extensive sale of her works has naturally brought her.

Those, however, who accuse her of "self-advertisement" will do well to remember that by such an absolutely false clamor they are depriving many in need from assistance which they might obtain were the novelist certain that her actions would not be misrepresented and misconstrued. For nothing makes her happier than to see others happy. She has helped many strugglers in the literary profession, too, and literary men and women who disparage her may be surprised to hear that she has herself never been known to say an injurious word with regard to any one of her fellow-authors.

It may be asked—what is Marie Corelli's life-programme? Most writers have a definite object in view—this one to achieve immortality; that one to make money. What is Marie Corelli's?

Briefly, she writes,—has always written,—to reach the hearts and minds of those thinking people of to-day who are striving to combat the sub