Ten shillings a column is our magnificent
rate of payment, and we can hardly afford that--"
Then he began pulling out one book and another from the piles of all
sorts that lay around him. "I suppose, like the rest, you'd better begin
on poetry. There's a tableful over there--go and take your pick of it,
unless, of course, you've got some special subject. You're not, I
suppose, an authority on Assyriology, eh, eh?"
Henry feared not, and then a new fit of industry came upon the editor,
and he begged Henry to take a look at the books while he ran through
another proof for the post.
That dusty table--evidently the rubbish-heap of the room--was Henry's
first object-lesson in the half tragical, half farcical, over-production
of modern literature. Such a mass of foolishness and ineptitude he had
never conceived of; such pretentiousness too--and while he made various
melancholy reflections upon human vanity, what should he unearth
suddenly from the heap, but his own little volume. He could but half
suppress a cry of recognition.
"What's that?" asked the editor, not turning round.
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