6 PHEFACE. 



probably in most, the publisher is too busy to even look at the literary bant- 

 ling, although, for aught he knows, it is a little, live, genuine literary Moses, 

 nestied among the reeds and bulrushes of the river of immortality. 



It sometimes happens that in the tirmament of letters, brilliant with the light 

 of stars unfading and quenchless, great intellectual luminaries appear unher- 

 alded, 



" Whose sudden visitations daze ttie world, 

 And flash like lightning ; while they leave behind 

 A voice thai in the distance, far away, 

 Wakens the slumbering ages," 



and, as publisher's are not infallible, and do not by intuition know every 

 thing, it has occasionally happened that they have found out, when it was too 

 late, that they have ignorantly confounded these celestial wanderers with the 

 countless fire-flies that rise from literary meadows, and disappear with the 

 warm summer night that gave them birth and made their short-lived existence 

 possible. 



Publishers are book-brokers, or middle men, who bring producers and con- 

 sumers together. They are the merchants of literature, and merely dispose 

 of the brain crop. Generally indemnified against loss, theirs is the lion's 

 share of the profits when profits are realized. Authors, even the most suc- 

 cessful, receive but a very small percentage of the profits realized from the 

 sale of their works. Great publishing houses accumulate great fortunes ; 

 while great authors die poor, and leave to their families only a brilliant and 

 enduring name, which is impotent to keep the wolf of hunger from their doors. 

 But publishers are to authors a convenience if not a necessity. They supply 

 the wings which are required to enable a new candidate for literary honors to 

 ascend sufficiently high in the world of letters to be seen. As notable pub- 

 lishers have at times fastened to dead weights, they have become exceedingly 

 incredulous and cautious, and look with great suspicion upon all who have not 

 demonstrated their ability to float and fly in the upper air of popular favor. 

 As doorkeepers they guard the entrance of that great stage upon which the 

 new author must stand in order to be widely known, but they are so chary of 

 their favors that only an occasional novice is allowed to tread the boards, and 

 take his chance of being hissed or applauded by the great public whose atten- 

 tion he presumes to challenge. 



As the author of the Isles of Summer was well aware of these facts, and 

 had no standing place in the great world of letters, why did he not continue 



