Pisistratus has lost color and flesh. His mother says he is very much improved,—that he takes to be the natural effect produced by Stultz and Hoby. Uncle Jack says he is "fined down." His father looks at him and writes to Trevanion,—
"Dear T.—I refused a salary for my son. Give him a horse, and two
hours a day to ride it. Yours, A. C."
The next day I am master of a pretty bay mare, and riding by the side of
Fanny Trevanion. Alas! alas!
CHAPTER VIII.
I have not mentioned my Uncle Roland. He is gone—abroad—to fetch his daughter. He has stayed longer than was expected. Does he seek his son still,—there as here? My father has finished the first portion of his work, in two great volumes. Uncle Jack, who for some time has been looking melancholy, and who now seldom stirs out, except on Sundays (on which clays we all meet at my father's and dine together),—Uncle Jack, I say, has undertaken to sell it.
"Don't be over-sanguine," says Uncle Jack, as he locks up the MS. in two red boxes with a slit in the lids, which belonged to one of the defunct companies. "Don't be over-sanguine as to the price. These publishers never venture much on a first experiment. They must be talked even into looking at the book."
"Oh!" said my father, "if they will publish it at all, and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. 'Nothing great,' said Dryden, 'ever came from a venal pen!'"
"An uncommonly foolish observation of Dryden's," returned Uncle Jack; "he ought to have known better."
"So he did," said I, "for he used his pen to fill his pockets, poor man!"
"But the pen was not venal, Master Anachronism," said my father. "A baker is not to be called venal if he sells his loaves, he is venal if he sells himself; Dryden only sold his loaves."