“You know folks are urged to publish books time and again, that wouldn’t have had no idee of doin’ it if they had been let alone.” Says I,—“You know after they git their books all finished, they hang back and hate to have ’em published; hate to, like dogs; and are urged out of their way by relatives and friends, and have to give up, and have ’em published. They naturally want to tell the Public how it is, and that these things are so.”
“Oh wall,” says he, “if the Public is any like me, he’d ruther hear the urgin’ himself than to hear the author tell on it. What did they break their backs for a writin’ fourteen or fifteen hundred pages if they laid out to hang back in the end. If they found their books all wrote out, a growin’ on huckleberry bushes, or cewcumber vines, there would be some sense in talkin’ about urgin’ ’em out of their way.”
And he sot his head on one side, and looked up at the ceilin’ with a dretful shrewd look onto his face, and went to kinder whistlin’. I can’t bear hintin’, and never could, I always despised hinters. And I says in almost cold tones, says I:
“Don’t you believe they was urged, Josiah Allen?”
“I haint said they wuzn’t, or they _wuz_. I said I had ruther see the hangin’ back, and hear the urgin’ than to hear of it by-the-by, in prefaces and things. _That’s_ what I said.”
But again that awful shrewd look come onto his face, and again he sot his head on one side and kinder went to whistlin’; no particular tune, but jest a plain sort of a promiscous whistle. But I kep’ considerable cool, and says I:
“Folks may be real dissatisfied with what they have wrote, and want to sort o’ apoligise, and run it down kinder.”
Says Josiah,—“If folks don’t write the best they know how to, it is a insult to the Public, and ort to be took by him as one.”
“That is so, Josiah,” says I. “I always thought so. But writers may try to do the very best they can; their minds may be well stabled, and their principles foundered on a rock; their motives as sound as brass, and soarin’ and high-toned as anything can be, and still at the same time, they may have a realizin’ sense that in spite of all their pains, there is faults in the book; lots of faults. And they may” says I, “feel it to be their duty to tell the Public of these faults. They may think it is wrong to conceal ’em, and the right way is to come out nobly and tell the Public of ’em.”