The
shrewdest men make mistakes, and certainly it was hardly wise of the
confidential clerk to choose this peaceful moment to speak about our
author's book. "I suppose we shall print a thousand?" he said. "Five
thousand!" ejaculated the publisher. What was he thinking about? Was
he filling up an imaginary income-tax statement, or was he trying to
estimate the number of butterflies that seemed to float in the amber
shadows of the room? The clerk did not know. "I suppose you mean one
thousand, sir?" he said gently. The publisher was now wide awake. He
had lost all his butterflies, and he was not the man to allow himself
to be sleepy in the afternoon. "I said five thousand!" The clerk bit
his lip and left the room.
The author never heard of this brief dialogue; probably if he had
been present he would have missed its significance. He would never
have connected it with the flood of paragraphs that appeared in the
Press announcing that the acumen of the publisher had discovered a
new author of genius--paragraphs wherein he was compared with
Dickens, Thackeray, Flaubert, Richardson, Sir Walter Besant, Thomas
Browne, and the author of "An Englishwoman's Love-letters." As it
was, it did not occur to him to wonder why the publisher should spend
so much money on advertising a book of which he had seemed to have
but a half-hearted appreciation. After all it was his book, and the
author felt that it was only natural that as the hour of publication
drew near the world of letters should show signs of a dignified
excitement.
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