“Fellow Boosters: In rising to address you on this auspicious occasion, I want to say first and foremost that I am glad and proud that when it came to the turn of the City of Zenith and yours truly to of had their old, old story told, so to speak, it was by an up-to-date modern successful writer, who, I am told on good authority, sells his books by their thousands and their tens of thousands, amounting in all, I am led to believe, to somewhere in the neighborhood of upward of approximately about 400,000 volumes of a single book, an output, my friends, which compares favorably with the production of cans of condensed milk and pasteboard cartons produced in our great city, and puts literature firmly upon the basis of quantity production of a standardized output.
“I am glad and proud, I may say, that it was him, this modern, up-to-date literary writer, full of pep and punch, who sees things as they are and not as others see us, that it has fallen to his lot to depict this book.
“Now, my friends, let us come with me and cast a glance backward upon American literature in the old days of yore, as the poet says, and see how different it used to be, and I will not detain you long. Let us see how different was the lot of such writers as James J. Whittier and Edwin A. Poe and William Wordsworth Longfellow, when they were in their prime. Did they sell their books by their thousands and their tens of thousands and have a snug bank-account and a nice little bungalow, maybe, and a good little bus standing ready in his own garage, so he could climb in, step on the gas and shoot out into God’s good out-o’-doors for a little airing and exercise after the day’s work? No, sir, my friends, I say it without fear of contradiction; they did not.
“Literature in those bygone days of yore was something else again, as one of our greatest writers puts it in his well-known tales of Potash and Perlmutter, depicting the better side of our Hebrew friends, with all their love of home and family. They were lucky if they sold one of their poems or fiction-writings for a mere song to some publisher, who maybe paid them enough to eke out a miserable pittance in some garret or some place like that.
“And, why, my friends, was this the case? Simply and solely because, my friends, they didn’t write about the things that Zenith City wants to read. What do we want to read, if I may put the question? Why, we want to read about the things we know about and understand—about the things of home and business—about business, first and foremost.
“The kind of romance we want is not the romance of two knights in tin armor trying to punch holes in each other’s stomachs, if you will excuse the word, with spears or something or maybe making illicit love—I speak plainly for we must not blink these evils—to some countess, who was maybe already the wife of some lord or duke, as in the bygone days of chivalry, when knighthood was in flower, as the poet says.
“That’s not the kind of romance we want. Believe me or not, my friends, when two keen-witted American realtors, maybe, of my own profession, sit down to make a deal, maybe about a piece of real estate, matching our keen wits against each other in the struggles and triumphs of modern business—there, my friends, is the romance of to-day.
“Us real he-American men and our wives and kiddies want to read about our city, Zenith, God bless it! and our homes properly equipped with a bathroom with sanitary plumbing, which I say without disrespect and I challenge any man to deny it, is the hall mark of civilization in this twentieth century of ours, and not like the filthy habits and customs of the effete nations of Europe to whom the use of soap—God save the mark!—is practically unknown. We like to read about our autos, our hot-water heating and kitchen cabinets and vacuum-cleaners and those sort of things.
“It is facts we want and not imagination, and I am glad to say that the successful literary writers of to-day, with their ears to the ground, their eyes to the keyhole and their nose to the grindstone, are hearing the stern voice of the people—yea! and heeding it. Imagination has had its day, my friends. It was all very well in those bygone days of yore for an author to depend on his imagination, but it’s different now.
“Let us contrast for a moment and I will not detain you long, two well-known writers. Take Washington Irwin, for instance, what did he write about? Why it is well known of all men that he wrote about many things that never had actually happened in this broad land of ours nor anywhere else. Take Rip Van Winkle, for instance, all about a disgraceful old bum, who soused himself into such a state that he beat his wife—a thing, I am sure, with all due respect, no man here in this audience would be guilty of in public. Then he got chased by a headless horseman—a headless horseman, mind you, my friends, an utter impossibility—and then to crown the climax he slept for twenty or thirty years, a perfect absurdity and one which, I am sure, no citizen of Zenith would place in the hands of a growing boy as an example to imitate.