“So that, in fact, uncle, every author who can’t find a publisher anywhere else will of course come to the society. The fraternity will be numerous.”
“It will indeed.”
“And the speculation—ruinous.”
“Ruinous, why?”
“Because in all mercantile negotiations it is ruinous to invest capital in supplies which fail of demand. You undertake to publish books that booksellers will not publish: why? Because booksellers can’t sell them. It’s just probable that you’ll not sell them any better than the booksellers. Ergo, the more your business, the larger your deficit; and the more numerous your society, the more disastrous your condition. Q. E. D.”
“Pooh! The select committee will decide what books are to be published.”
“Then where the deuce is the advantage to the authors? I would as lief submit; my work to a publisher as I would to a select committee of authors. At all events, the publisher is not my rival; and I suspect he is the best judge, after all, of a book,—as an accoucheur ought to be of a baby.”
“Upon my word, nephew, you pay a bad compliment to your father’s Great Work, which the booksellers will have nothing to do with.”
That was artfully said, and I was posed; when Mr. Caxton observed, with an apologetic smile,—
“The fact is, my dear Pisistratus, that I want my book published without diminishing the little fortune I keep for you some day. Uncle Jack starts a society so to publish it. Health and long life to Uncle Jack’s society! One can’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”