ass,) and joked with Orpheus
Stoddard,--he like simple Snarle? Pooh!

"Is Mr. Hardwill in?" asked Mortimer. He came near adding, "the great
publisher."

The clerk, to whom his eyes looked, said he believed he was, and went on
calling off from a slip of paper:

"'Murdered Milkmaid,' two copies; 'Bloody Hatchet,' twelve copies; 'The
Seducer's Victim,' thirty copies; 'The Young Mother,' five copies; 'The
Deranged Daughter,' seven copies; 'Hifiluten and _other_ poems,' one copy."

"Can I speak with him?" ventured Mortimer, as the clerk, who was calling
off the _criminal literature_, paused for breath.

"'The Merry Maniacs,' ten copies--Yes, sir; but he's engaged. Wait awhile,"
continued the clerk, as Mortimer turned to go. "'The Wizard of Wehawkin,'
six copies; 'The Phantom of Philadelphia,' twelve copies, etc., etc."

So our author seated himself on a case of books, and looked at the wall of
volumes which encompassed him. Somehow or another, it suggested the Great
Wall of China and the Cordilleras. He could give no reason why. No more can
I. Perhaps he felt that light literature, paradoxical as it may seem, is
always heavy, and so his mind ran on the prodigious freaks of man and
nature.

After the clerk had finished calling off from the slip of paper, that
promising young gentleman suddenly discovered that Mr. Hardwill was _not_
engaged, and offered to conduct our friend into his august presence.
Mortimer gathered up his heart, as it were, and his loosened manuscript at
the same moment--"Her heart and morning broke together!"--and followed the
clerk through an avenue of literature, to a snug inner office--that
literary Sebastopol, which is forever being stormed by seedy poets and
their allies, historians, romancers, and strong-minded Eves.

Could it be possible?

Was that middle-sized, dark-eyed, light-haired, pleasant-looking man the
Napoleon of publishers? However, there was something shrewd in his dark
eye, or rather eyes--for he had two of them--and a certain expression of
the mouth, which seemed full of dealings with the world.

"Is this Mr. Hardwill?" asked Mortimer.

"Yes, sir. Will you be seated?"

"I have a romance," commenced Mortimer, with hesitation, "which I would
offer you for publication. I have written it carefully, and I think it
possesses several new features----"

Here his voice broke down, for he felt those dark, scrutinizing eyes in his
face; besides, the intense attention with which he