mill with a renowned bruiser.  Of course one ought not to do this professionally exactly, ought not to prepare for doing it by study and severe discipline, by training for it as for a trade, but simply to toss it off easily, as one makes a call, or pays a compliment, or drives four-in-hand.  One does not need to have that interior impulse which drives a poor devil of an author to express himself, that something to say which torments the poet into extreme irritability unless he can be rid of it, that noble hunger for fame which comes from a consciousness of the possession of vital thought and emotion.

The beauty of this condescension to literature of which we speak is that it has that quality of spontaneity that does not presuppose either a capacity or a call.  There is no mystery about the craft.  One resolves to write a book, as he might to take a journey or to practice on the piano, and the thing is done.  Everybody can write, at least everybody does write.  It is a wonderful time for literature.  The Queen of England writes for it, the Queen of Roumania writes for it, the Shah of Persia writes for it, Lady Brassey, the yachtswoman, wrote for it, Congressmen write for it, peers write for it.  The novel is the common recreation of ladies of rank, and where is the young woman in this country who has not tried her hand at a romance or made a cast at a popular magazine?  The effect of all this upon literature is expansive and joyous.  Superstition about any mystery in the art has nearly disappeared.  It is a common observation that if persons fail in everything else, if they are fit for nothing else, they can at least write.  It is such an easy occupation, and the remuneration is in such disproportion to the expenditure!  Isn’t it indeed the golden era of letters?  If only the letters were gold!

If there is any such thing remaining as a guild of authors, somewhere on the back seats, witnessing this marvelous Kingdom Come of Literature, there must also be a little bunch of actors, born for the stage, who see with mixed feelings their arena taken possession of by fairer if not more competent players.  These players are not to be confounded with the play-actors whom the Puritans denounced, nor with those trained to the profession in the French capital.

In the United States and in England we are born to enter upon any avocation, thank Heaven! without training for it.  We have not in this country any such obstacle to universal success as the Theatre Francais, but Providence has given us, for wise purposes no doubt, Private Theatricals (not always so private as they should be), which domesticate the drama, and supply the stage with some of the most beautiful and best dressed performers the world has ever seen.  Whatever they may say of it, it is a gallant and a susceptible age, and all men bow to loveliness, and all women recognize a talent for clothes.  We do not say that there is not such a thing as dramatic art, and