Remember, also, that, when a writer talks of himself, he is not necessarily speaking of his own definite John Smith-ship, that does the marketing and pays the taxes and is a useful member of society.  Not at all.  It is himself as one unit of the great sum of mankind.  He means himself, not as an isolated individual, but as a part of humanity.  His narration is pertinent, because it relates to the human family.  He brings forward a part of the common property.  He does not touch that which pertains exclusively to himself.  His self is self-created.  His imaginative may have as large a share in the person as his descriptive powers.  You don’t understand me precisely?  Sorry for you.

You think me arrogant.  You would think so a great deal more, if you knew me better.  At heart I believe I incline very much to the opinion of a charming friend of mine, that, “after all, nobody in the world is of much account but Susy and me,”—­only in my formula I leave out Susy.  Don’t, therefore, think solely of the arrogance that is revealed, but think also of the masses concealed, and in consideration of the greater repression pardon the great expression.  It is not the persons who sin the least, but those who overcome the strongest temptations, who are the most virtuous.  People endowed by Nature with a sweet humility do not deserve half the credit for their lovely character that those who are naturally selfish and arrogant often deserve for being no more disagreeable than they are.  Yes, it must be confessed, you are right in attributing arrogance,—­though, after this meek confession and repentance, if you do not forgive me freely and fully, for past and future, your secondary will be a great deal worse than my original sin;—­but you never would accuse me of “an arrogance that disdains docility,” if you had seen the mean-spirited way in which I sit down by the side of an editor and let him ram-page over my manuscript.  Out fly my best thoughts, my finest figures, my sharpest epigrams,—­without chloroform,—­and I give no sign.  I have heard that successful authors can always have everything their own way.  I must be the greatest—­or the smallest—­failure of the age.

“It will be much better to omit this,” says the High Inquisitor, turning the thumb-screw.

“No,” I writhe.  “Take everything else, but leave that.”

“I am glad to see that you agree with me,” he responds, with Mephistophelian courtesy; and away it goes, and I say nothing, thankful that enough is left to hobble in at all.

“Revealing somewhat of the arrogance of success,” you comment, directed by your Evil Genius, upon that especial chapter which was written in a gully of the Valley of Humiliation, when I was gasping under an AEtna of rejected manuscripts,—­when there was not a respectable newspaper in the country by which I had not been “declined with thanks,”—­when, in the desperation of my determination, I had recourse to bribery, and sent an editor a dollar with the manuscript, to pay him for the fifteen minutes it would take to read it. (Mem. I never heard from editor, manuscript, or dollar.) No, it may be arrogance, but it is not the arrogance of success.  Whatever it was, it was in the grain.  And, to look at it in another light, I cannot have been “spoiled by the indulgent praise which my early efforts received,” because, on the other hand, I have always been praised,—­