If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to convert angels:  and they wouldn’t need it.  The thin top crust of humanity—­the cultivated—­are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies, it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the over-fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that.  It is not that little minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to uplift, I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are underneath.  That mass will never see the Old Masters—­that sight is for the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they will never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves them higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin classics, but they will strike step with Kipling’s drum-beat, and they will march; for all Jonathan Edwards’s help they would die in their slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by the ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its place upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes.

Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first.  I have never tried in even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes.  I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training.  And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game—­the masses.  I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, but have done my best to entertain them.  To simply amuse them would have satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher’s one:  for amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue after it.  My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot know whether I have won its approbation or only got its censure.

Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but have been served like the others—­criticized from the culture-standard —­to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never cared what became of the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre and the opera—­they had no use for me and the melodeon.

And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making supplication to this effect:  that the critics adopt a rule recognizing the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for them shall be judged.  Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further than yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.