work of a
hack kind for the magazines and cyclopedias, etc."

"I thought you were on the 'Weekly Prig.' Berkeley or somebody told me
so."

"So I was at one time, but I got out of it. The work was drying me
up too fast. The concern is run by a lot of cusses who have failed
in various branches of literature themselves, and undertake, in
consequence, to make it unpleasant for every one else who tries to
write anything. I got so that I could sling as cynical a quill as the
rest of them. But the trick is an easy one and hardly worth learning.
It's a great fraud, this business of reviewing. Here's a man of
learning, for instance, who has spent years of research on a
particular work. He has collected a large library, perhaps, on his
subject; knows more about it than any one else living. Then along
comes some insolent little whipper-snapper,--like me,--whose sole
knowledge of the matter in hand is drawn from the very book that he
pretends to criticise, and patronizes the learned author in a book
notice. No, I got out of it; I hadn't the cheek."

"I bought your book,"[A] said I, "as soon as it came out."

[Footnote A: Dialogues and Romances. By E. Clay. New York: Pater &
Sons, 1874.]

"That's more than the public did."

"Yes, and I read it, too."

"No! Did you, now? That's true friendship. Well, how did you like it?
Did you get your money's worth?"

I hesitated a moment and then answered:

"It was clever, of course. Anything that you write would be sure to be
that. But it didn't appear to get down to hard-pan or to take a firm
grip on life--did it?"

"Ah, that's what the critics said,--only they've got a set of phrases
for expressing it. They said it was amateurish, that it was in a
falsetto key, etc."

"Well, how does it strike you, yourself? You know that it didn't come
out of the deep places of your nature, don't you? You feel that you've
got better behind?"

"Oh, I don't know. A man does what he can. I rather think it's the
best I can do at present."

"Why don't you go at some more serious work; some _magnum opus_ that
would bring your whole strength into play?"

"A _magnum opus_, my dear fellow!" replied Clay, with a shade of
irritation in his voice. "You talk as if a _magnum opus_ could be done
for the wishing. Why don't _you_ do a _magnum opus_, then?"

"Why don't _I_? Oh, I'm not a literary fellow--never professed to be.
What a question!"

"Well, no more am I, perhaps. I don't think any better of