To brag little,--to show well, -- to crow gently, if in luck,--to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I think we have shown them in any great perfection of late.] -- Apropos of horses.

Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors?
Judicious management; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the rein;--this is what I mean by jockeying.
-- When an author has a number of books out a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or a quotation.
-- Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming.

The extracts are GROUND-BAIT.
-- Literary life is fun of curious phenomena.

I don't know that there is anything more noticeable than what we may call CONVENTIONAL REPUTATIONS.

There is a tacit understanding in every community of men of letters that they will not disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity.