The American authors, most of them, only take up the pen at odd hours. Business first. Mark Twain is a publisher; Oliver Wendell Holmes is a doctor; Edmund Clarence Stedman is a stockbroker; Robert Ingersoll, an advocate; George Cable, a public lecturer; and James Russell Lowell is a diplomatist. The rest are journalists. There are few, indeed, who live by book-writing.
However, perhaps a day will come when American law will prevent publishers from stealing the works of European writers, and publishing them at low prices; then American authors, having no longer to fear this unjust competition, may be able to sell their books in sufficient numbers to allow them to pay their landlord and tradesmen out of the profits. When that day comes, American literature will spread its pinions and rise to prodigious heights.
In a country governed by Protectionists, it does seem strange that national products should all be protected except the products of the brain. Such an anomaly cannot certainly endure. The moral sense of the people will triumph. Boston, not Kansas, must win.
Unluckily, the Copyright Bill has the misfortune to be desired by the English; and this is quite enough for the Washington politicians to refuse to pass it, although the Americans desire it no less than the English, if not more.
CHAPTER VI.
Diamonds.—How Diamonds are Won and Lost in Tripping.—The Sweat of Jonathan's brow crystallized in his Wife's Ears.—Avarice is a vice little known in America.—Jonathan is not the Slave of the Almighty Dollar to the Extent that he is believed to be.
an has been perpetuated to expiate the transgression of his first parent by hard labour. Jonathan is a proof of it.
He labours, he toils, and the sweat of his brow crystallizes upon the neck and arms of his beloved womankind in the form of diamonds.