“Never! never! never!” cried Leonard, veiling his face with his hands.
“Such would have been my career,” continued the publisher; “but I luckily had a rich relative, a trader, whose calling I despised as a boy, who kindly forgave my folly, bound me as an apprentice, and here I am; and now I can afford to write books as well as sell them.
“Young man, you must have respectable relations,—go by their advice and counsel; cling fast to some positive calling. Be anything in this city rather than poet by profession.”
“And how, sir, have there ever been poets? Had they other callings?”
“Read their biography, and then—envy them!”
Leonard was silent a moment; but lifting his head, answered loud and quickly, “I have read their biography. True, their lot was poverty,—perhaps hunger. Sir, I—envy them!”
“Poverty and hunger are small evils,” answered the bookseller, with a grave, kind smile. “There are worse,—debt and degradation, and—despair.”
“No, sir, no, you exaggerate; these last are not the lot of all poets.”
“Right, for most of our greatest poets had some private means of their own. And for others—why, all who have put into a lottery have not drawn blanks. But who could advise another man to set his whole hope of fortune on the chance of a prize in a lottery? And such a lottery!” groaned the publisher, glancing towards sheets and reams of dead authors, lying, like lead, upon his shelves.
Leonard clutched his manuscripts to his heart, and hurried away.