The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better that most of his schoolmates and life-mates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such  confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large of the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete this circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. 

Hawthorne