Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/27

 THE RANDALL FAMILY I9

you would ever accomplish them. I have looked upon you as leading an idle and therefore useless life. But I was wrong. If you should do nothing more than you have done in writing this volume of poems, you will have accomplished more than the majority of men — more, I mean, for the good of the human race. Good food, when taken into a healthy stomach, not only sustains life for the time, but increases the power of digestion and creates an appetite for more. It is the same with the soul's ali- ment. I knotv when I have dined on roast beef, and can tell by the effect that it is not charlotte-russe and whip- syllabub. I have had more than one hearty meal out of your volume. (Excuse the shop !) Now, if it were nec- essary, in order to induce people to eat roast beef, to puff it in the newspapers, I should certainly advise its being done, that the consumption might not be confined to the enlightened few. My father, being a knowing one, used to eat tomatoes when the rest of the world considered them poisonous. There is no such apprehension in the present case, and all people want is to be invited to par- take of the dish — to have it set before them.

I hope that, the next time you make a contract with a publisher, you will let him puff you as much as he likes. What harm does it do you .'* The judicious understand that that is a mere publisher's expedient to make the book sell. They form their opinions independently. But they might never have had a chance to form any opinions at all in the case, if the matter had not been thrust upon their notice in a way that you would regard, and justly, as a species of charlatanry. It is no use to kick against the pricks ; and, if quackish procedures serve occasionally to bring a good thing into sight that would otherwise remain hidden, there is some good even in quackery.

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