the abominable gymnastic of writing. But no: the venom is
in the blood.

Great men have graced the job--and got out of it as soon as possible.
George Meredith was a reader once; so was Frank Norris; also E.V. Lucas
and Gilbert Chesterton. One of the latter's comments on a manuscript is
still preserved. Writing of a novel by a lady who was the author of many
unpublished stories, all marked by perseverance rather than talent, he
said, "Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite lack of variety."
But alas, we hear too little of these gentlemen in their capacity as
publishers' pursuivants. Patrolling the porches of literature, why did
they not bequeath us some pandect of their experience, some rich
garniture of commentary on the adventures that befell? But they, and
younger men such as Coningsby Dawson and Sinclair Lewis, have gone on
into the sunny hayfields of popular authorship and said nothing.

But these brilliant swallow-tailed migrants are not typical. Your true
specimen of manuscript reader is the faithful old percheron who is
content to go on, year after year, sorting over the literary pemmican
that comes before him, inexhaustible in his love for the delicacies of
good writing, happy if once or twice a twelve-month he chance upon some
winged thing. He is not the pettifogging pilgarlic of popular
conception: he is a devoted servant of letters, willing to take his
thirty or forty dollars a week, willing to suffer the _peine forte et
dure_ of his profession in the knowledge of honest duty done, writing
terse and marrowy little essays on manuscripts, which are buried in the
publishers' files. This man is an honour to the profession, and I
believe there are many such. Certainly there are many who sigh wistfully
when they must lay aside some cherished writing of their own to devote
an evening to illiterate twaddle. Five book manuscripts a day, thirty a
week, close to fifteen hundred a year--that is a fair showing for the
head reader of a large publishing house.

One can hardly blame him if he sometimes grow skeptic or acid about the
profession of letters. Of each hundred manuscripts turned in there will
rarely be more than three or four that merit any serious consideration;
only about one in a hundred will be acceptable for publication. And the
others--alas that human beings should have invented ink to steal away
their brains! "Only a Lady Barber" is the title of a novel in manuscript
which I read the other day. W