Chapter XXXVIII [excerpt]

     Books by club members had prominent places in the library. There were works by Eugene Field and by several other authors of some reputation. There were more of such books as the following: “Joys of Suburban Life,” “The Best Route to California,” “Lake Michigan Summer Resorts,” “Shall Chicago Own Its Street Railways, or Its Street Railways Own Chicago?” “The Smoke Nuisance in Chicago,” “The Western Corn Belt,” and “Poems to Colorado Potatoes.”
     There was a “Life of McKinley,” and biographies of other noted men who had recently died. I was told that the biographer himself stood near. Just as he was pointed out I heard him borrow a quarter to buy a dinner with. “Is it possible that the author of so many books needs money?” I asked.
     “Geniuses are ever careless of money,” replied my friend. “Besides, he made only enough on any one of those biographies to pay a month’s board with. Anybody could be the kind of an author that he is. When a prominent man dies, he clips what’s written about him out of newspapers and magazines, pastes it all together, writes a hundred words or so of introduction, and then turns the stuff in to a publishing house. The books are given those flaming red bindings you see, and agents go out in the backwoods and into the corn belt and sell them to the Jaspers.”