But my unfailing facility for getting into hot water was not to find an exception in London.  As agent for “Scribner’s” I had to secure contributions from English authors, not so easy then as now.  Amongst other items I was instructed to secure a story from a certain author, and I contracted with her for the proof sheets of her next novel, about to be published in England in the—­Magazine, the price to be paid for the advance proofs being £500, if I remember rightly.  There was then no international copyright with America, but a courtesy right between publishers, with a general understanding amongst the trade that the works of an author once published by a house should be considered as belonging by prescription to it.  On the announcement by “Scribner’s” of the coming publication of this author’s novel, the firm who had published her prior works announced that they would not respect the agreement with the author, but would pirate the story.  As the result of the quarrel, “Scribner’s” resigned the story to its rival on payment to the lady of the sum agreed on.  But now appeared an utterly unsuspected state of things:  the—­Magazine had already sold the proof sheets of the story to a third American house, and an exposé of the situation showed that English publishers had been in the practice of selling the advance proofs of their most popular works of fiction to the American houses, and recouping the half of the price paid the authors.

On the heels of this discovery by the public, there happened one of the periodical outbreaks of English journalism against the “American” system of literary piracy, and simultaneously the visit of a committee of the American publishers deputed by the government of the United States to study out an arrangement for a treaty of international copyright on the basis of equality of right and privileges in both countries of the authors of both countries, but with no recognition of publishers’ rights or privileges.  The English government, taking advice from a committee of authors and publishers, in which the interest of the publishers was dominant, declined the offer of the American form of treaty, insisting on the protection of publishers’ rights, and the negotiations fell through, with great increase of the outcry in the English press.  Being in communication with Mr. William H. Appleton, the head of the American committee, and in possession of the facts of the case as regarded the courtesy right, I wrote to the English papers, putting the American view of the matter, and the facts, dwelling on the hitherto unknown point that the depredations on the authors’ interests were committed by the English publisher, who sold to the American the wares the latter was accused of stealing, whereas the fact was that he bought and paid equally for the right of publication, while the English publisher continued to reprint American books without the least regard for analogous transatlantic rights.