No one saw more distinctly the absolute necessity
of its fullest recognition in a moneymaking age and in a money-making
land, if the spread of the dry rot of moral deterioration were to be
prevented. The ampler horizon it presented, the loftier ideals it set up,
the counteracting agency it supplied to the sordidness of motive and act
which, left unchecked, was certain to overwhelm the national spirit--all
these were enforced by him again and again with clearness and
effectiveness. His essays of this kind will never be popular in the sense
in which are his other writings. But no thoughtful man will rise up from
reading them without having gained a vivid conception of the part which
literature plays in the life of even the humblest, and without a deeper
conviction of its necessity to any healthy development of the character
of a people.
During the early part of his purely literary career a large proportion of
Warner's collected writings, which then appeared, were first published in
the Atlantic Monthly. But about fourteen years before his death he became
closely connected with Harper's Magazine. From May, 1886, to March, 1892,
he conducted the Editor's Drawer of that periodical. The month following
this last date he succeeded William Dean Howells as the contributor of
the Editor's Study. This position he held until July, 1898. The scope of
this department was largely expanded after the death of George William
Curtis in the summer of 1892, and the consequent discontinuance of the
Editor's Easy Chair.
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