“I’m going to have it printed,”
he said, “and send it to all the publishers;
and also to literary men and to magazines.”
“And are you going to sign your name to it?”
she cried.
“I’ve already signed my name to it,”
he answered.
“And when are you going to do it?”
“As soon as the book comes back from the next
publisher.”
Then he sat down to breakfast; and afterwards, without
resting, he finished the pot-boiler, and took it to
the editor. After a due interval he went again,
trembling and faint with anxiety. He had sold
only one book-review, and he was using Corydon’s
money again. People who hated him had predicted
that he would do just that, and he had answered that
he would die first!
He came home, radiant with delight. “He
says he’ll take it!” he proclaimed.
“Only I’ve got to do a new ending for the
fourth installment—he wants something more
exciting. So I’m going to have the countess
caught in a burning tower!”
And he wrote that, and went yet again, and came home
with a hundred dollars buttoned tightly in his inside
vest-pocket. He was like a man who has escaped
from a dungeon. The field was clear before him
at last! His manifesto was going out to the world!
THE BAIT IS SEIZED
They sat, gazing down the slope of the little vale.
She was turning idly the pages of the book, and she
read to him—
“Lovely all times she lies,
lovely to-night!—
Only, methinks,
some loss of habit’s power
Befalls
me wandering through this upland dim.
Once pass’d
I blindfold here, at any hour;
Now
seldom come I, since I came with him.”
“It was here we first read the poem,”
he said. “Every spot brings back some line
of it.”
“Even the old oak-tree where we used to sit,”
she smiled—
“Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!"_
Section 1. Thyrsis was half hoping that the next
publisher would decline the manuscript; and he was
only mildly stirred when he got a letter saying that
although the publisher could not make an offer for
the book, one of his readers was so much interested
in it that he would like to have a talk with the author.
Thyrsis replied that he was willing; and to his surprise
he learned that the reader was none other than that
Prof. Osborne, who in the university had impressed
upon him his ignorance of the art of writing.
He paid a call at the professor’s home, and
they had a long talk. There was nothing said
about their former interview. Evidently the other
recognized that Thyrsis had succeeded in making good
his claim to be allowed to hew his own way; and Thyrsis
was content with that tacit surrender.
They talked about the book. The professor first
assured him that it would not sell, and then went
on to explain to him why; and so they came to a grapple.
