McClures Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 | Page 9

of ambitions; and always of hard work, and
plenty of it. Really, I think the gospel of work then, as always, and to
all of us, was salvation from a good deal of nonsense incident to the
situation.
I have been told that the American circulation of the book, which has
remained below one hundred thousand, was rather more than that in
Great Britain. Translations, of course, were manifold. The French, the
German, the Dutch, the Italian have been conscientiously sent to the
author; some others, I think, have not. More applications to republish
my books have reached me from Germany than from any other country.
For a while, with the tenderness of a novice in such experience, I kept
all these foreign curiosities on my book-shelves; but the throes of
several New England "movings" have scattered their ashes.
Not long ago I came across a tiny pamphlet in which I used to feel
more honest pride than in any edition of "The Gates Ajar" which it has
ever been my fortune to handle. It is a sickly yellow thing, covered
with a coarse design of some kind, in which the wings of a particularly
sprawly angel predominate.
The print is abhorrent, and the paper such as any respectable publisher
would prepare to be condemned for in this world and in that to come.
In fact, the entire book was thus given out by one of the most
enterprising of English pirates, as an advertisement for a patent
medicine. I have never traced the chemical history of the drug; but it
has pleased my fancy to suppose it to be the one in which Mrs. Holt,
the mother of Felix, dealt so largely; and whose sale Felix put forth his
mighty conscience to suppress.
Of course, owing to the state of our copyright laws at that time, all this
foreign publication was piratical; and most of it brought no visible
consequence to the author, beyond that cold tribute to personal vanity
on which our unlucky race is expected to feed. I should make an
exception. The house of Sampson, Low and Company honorably
offered me, at a very early date, a certain recognition of their editions.
Other reputable English houses since, in the case of succeeding books,
have passed contracts of a gentlemanly nature, with the
disproportionately grateful author, who was, of course, entirely at their
mercy. When an American writer compares the sturdy figures of the
foreign circulation with the attenuated numerals of such visible returns

as reach him, he is more puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse.
But the relation of foreign publishers to "home talent" is an ancient and
honorable conundrum, which it is not for this paper or its writer to
solve.
Nevertheless, I found the patent medicine "Gates Ajar" delicious, and
used to compare it with Messrs. Fields and Osgood's edition de luxe
with an undisguised delight, which I found it difficult to induce the best
of publishers to share.
Like most such matters, the first energy of the book had its funny and
its serious side. A man coming from a far Western village, and visiting
Boston for the first time, is said to have approached a bartender, in an
exclusive hotel, thus confidentially:
"Excuse me, but I am a stranger in this part of the country, and I want
to ask a question. Everywhere I go, I see posters up like this--'The
Gates Ajar!' 'The Gates Ajar!' I'm sick to death of the sight of the durn
thing; I haven't darst to ask what it is. Do tell a fellar! Is it a new kind
of drink?"
There was a "Gates Ajar" tippet for sale in the country groceries; I have
fancied that it was a knit affair of as many colors as the jewels in the
eternal portals, and extremely openwork. There was a "Gates Ajar"
collar--paper, I fear--loading the city counters. Ghastly rumors have
reached me of the existence of a "Gates Ajar" cigar. I have never
personally set my eyes upon these tangible forms of earthly fame. If the
truth must be told, I have kept a cowardly distance from them. Music,
of course, took her turn at the book, and popular "pieces" warbled
under its title. One of these, I think, is sung in Sunday-schools to this
day. Then there was, and still exists, the "Gates Ajar" funeral piece.
This used to seem to me the least serious of them all; but, by degrees,
when I saw the persistence of force in that elaborate symbol, how many
mourning people were so constituted as to find comfort in it, I came to
have a tolerance for it which even grows into a certain tenderness. I
may frankly admit that I have begun to love it since I heard