The code of etiquette which governs the conduct of the dime-museum lecturer ordains that no brutally frank or emphatic allusions shall be made to the pictures of the different human “freaks” which are offered for sale. “I believe,” says the lecturer, in a tone of complete indifference, as he brings his glowing eulogy of the “Tattooed Queen” to a fitting close, “that the lady has a few of her photographs which she wishes to dispose of.” And as the lady has eight of them in each hand, and twenty-two more arranged along the edge of the platform in front of her, even the most skeptical audience is forced to admit that the professor’s surmise is correct.
“I believe,” says the diffident Mr. Bok, “that there are some fair likenesses of myself for sale on Chestnut Street, and I understand that they cost a quarter apiece.”
My readers can depend upon it that what Mr. Bok has to say about those photographs is absolutely true.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. But first of all let us think of the many mercies for which we have to be thankful, and then let us be just as well as generous; for certainly the magazines have been of enormous benefit to the reading public as well as to those whose profession it is to entertain, amuse, or instruct that public.
The magazines have not only raised the rates of compensation for literary labor, but they have spread the reading habit to an enormous extent, and are still educating vast numbers of people--of a class that do not read at all when they happen to be born in other countries--to become habitual buyers of books and periodicals. Moreover it must be said of the editors of these publications that they place their time at the disposal of every aspiring author who brings his manuscript to them. In other words, they give careful attention to whatever work is submitted to them, and are glad to buy and pay promptly for such stories and poems as they may deem suitable to their needs. I have never seen any disposition on the part of any of them to crush budding genius, but, on the contrary, I have frequently met them on dark, rainy nights hunting through the town with lanterns in their hands for new writers. In fact, I do not know of any place in this world where a young man may look for fairer attention and encouragement than he will find in the office of a modern magazine.