This habit of mine is superstitious.
How well I can imagine the answer of some popular novelist if he heard me speak scornfully of his books.

"My dear fellow," he might say, "do you suppose I am not aware that my books are rubbish?
I know it just as well as you do.

But my vocation is to live comfortably.

I have a luxurious house, a wife and children who are happy and grateful to me for their happiness.

If you choose to live in a garret, and, what's worse, make your wife and children share it with you, that's your concern." The man would be abundantly right.' 'But,' said Amy, 'why should you assume that his books are rubbish?
Good work succeeds--now and then.' 'I speak of the common kind of success, which is never due to literary merit.