I imagine that if a young man went to a crystal-gazer and was
told that he would work desperately hard for the next twenty years,
and would by that time have earned (and saved) a fortune, he would be
very disappointed. Probably he would ask for his money back.
The Largest Circulation
There died recently a gentleman named Nat Gould, twenty million copies
of whose books had been sold. They were hardly ever reviewed in the
literary papers; advertisements of them rarely appeared; no puffs nor
photographs of the author were thrust upon one, Unostentatiously he
wrote them--five in a year--and his million public was assured to him.
It is perhaps too late now to begin to read them, but we cannot help
wondering whence came his enormous popularity.
Mr. Gould, as all the world knows, wrote racing novels. They were
called, _Won by a Neck_, or _Lost by a Head_, or _Odds On_, or _The
Stable-lad's Dilemma_. Every third man in the Army carried one about
with him. I was unlucky in this matter, for all my men belonged to the
other two-thirds; they read detective stories about a certain Sexton
Blake, who kept bursting into rooms and finding finger-marks.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187