Stars Are Still There, The

All my life, since I grew old enough to, make my own living, I have done so as a professional writer. That means the publication of between forty and fifty volumes of fiction, history and travel, aside from more short stories and articles than I can remember. Therefore I have a fair idea of how the public reacts; and I know that when any book calls out, over a period of four years, an average of half a dozen letters a day, the letters themselves have significance as showing what people are thinking about. Such letters are a pretty accurate cross section of the general public's attitude toward the subject of that book. In this case the continuation of the individual in some sort of life after death. Immortality.

I said above that the letters have averaged half a dozen a day. That is over the years. In March, eighteen months after publication of the book I am talking about, I kept track. The average for that month was sixteen letters a day! While so fast and furious a pace has by now (mid-spring of 1945) slacked off, I still get them at the steady rate of about a hundred a month. These later letters continue to ask the same questions, voice the same bewilderments, seek the same hopes.