who
was willing to issue the book at the author's expense. All this,
let it be said with regret, did not bring a blush to the author's
sea-tanned cheek. On the contrary, he cherished a secret apprehension
that Imogene had gone mad.

The one fly in the ointment at this juncture was the author's
unmannerly attitude towards publishers who issued books at the
writer's expense. He went so far as to characterize them as crooks and
declined to have anything to do with them. He had been writing for a
good many years of apprenticeship and had arrived at the conclusion
that a man might get along in decent comfort all his life without
publishing anything at all, if fate so ordered it; and the suggestion
that he pay away his hoarded sea-wages just to have his name on a
book, clouded a naturally sunny temper for some time.

Here, however, sitting at tea in the intensely artistic flat on the
third floor over a grocery-store, and looking out upon the River
and the warehouses of the Surrey Side, the author is rapturously
apprised that the book is as good as sold. A publisher's reader, a
representative of an important house, has declared that the book has
distinction. This is a true record, in the main, and the author is
obliged to confess, thirteen years later, that he fell for this. In
his simplicity he thought it a fine thing to have distinction. And
this is true. It is a fine thing, but the fineness of the bloom is
soon licked off by the busy tongues of the Imogenes and their
masculine counterparts. The author did not see this so clearly at the
time. He felt as a cat feels when stroked. The patrons of distinction
were also in a position to make a cash offer for the copyright. In
those days, when fifty dollars a month was considered adequate
remuneration for his services at sea, the author had modest notions
about cash offers. He treated the matter in a sporting spirit and
closed.

But it was not consummated in a word and with the gesture of signing
one's name. Things are not done that way when dealing with Imogenes.
One has to negotiate a continent of emotional hill-climbing and an
ocean of talk. A sea-faring person, schooled to deal with men and
things with an economy of effort, is moved to amazement before the
spectacle of a "bachelor girl" in action. One assumes, of course,
that she intends to remain a "bachelor girl." There is the solemn
initiation into the ranks of her pals. Palship, as she calls it, is
something quite di