“My books don’t sell, sir,” sighed the ex-author, with another incredulous shake of the head. “Either there’s a conspiracy among the critics to keep me down, or else I’m grossly mistaken in my vocation. Besides, I’ve lost my right arm, and can’t write. Do[Do] you know,” he continued, wiping away a tear,—“do you know what one of the newspapers said on receiving the news of my wound? Well, it said, ‘This will be a happy dispensation for publishers and the public, if it shall have the effect of keeping the Major from again using the pen!’”
“The unclean reptile!” exclaimed Pompilard, grinding his heel on the floor as if he would crush something. “Don’t mind such ribaldry, Major.”
“I wouldn’t, if I weren’t afraid there’s some truth in it,” sighed the unsuccessful author.
“It’s an entire lie!” exclaimed Pompilard; “your books are good books,—excellent books,—and people will find it out some of these days. You shall write another. You don’t need an arm, do you, to help you do brain-work? Didn’t Sir Walter employ an amanuensis? Why can’t Major Purling do the same? Why can’t he dictate his magnum opus,—the crowning achievement of his literary life,—his history of the Great Rebellion,—why can’t he dictate it as well without as with an arm?”
The Major’s lips began to work and his eyes to brighten. Ominous of disaster to the race of publishers, the old spirit began to be roused in him, bringing animation and high resolve. The passion of authorship, long repressed, was threatening to rekindle in that bosom. He tried to rub his forehead with his right hand, but finding it gone, he resorted to his left. His hair (just beginning to get crisp and grayish over his ears) he pushed carelessly away from his brow. He jerked himself up from his pillow, and exclaimed: “Upon my word, father-in-law, that’s not a bad idea of yours,—that idea of tackling myself to a history of the war. Let me see. How large a work ought it to be? Could it be compressed into six volumes of the size of Irving’s Washington? I think it might. At any rate, I could try. ‘A History of the Great Rebellion: its Rise and Fall. By Cecil Purling, late Major of Volunteers.’ Motto: ‘All which I saw and part of which I was.’ Come, now! That wouldn’t sound badly.”
“It would be a trump card for any publisher,” said Pompilard, growing to be sincerely sanguine. “Get up the right kind of a Prospectus, and publish the work by subscription. I could procure a thousand subscribers myself. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t get twenty thousand. We might all make our fortunes by it.”
“So we might!” exclaimed the excited Major, forgetting that there were ladies present, and that he had on only his drawers, and leaping out of bed, then suddenly leaping back again, and begging everybody’s pardon. “It can be easily calculated,” continued he. “Just hand me a slip of paper and a pencil, Melissa. Thank you. Look now, father-in-law; twenty thousand copies at two dollars a volume for six volumes would give a hundred and forty thousand dollars clear. Throw off fifty per cent of that for expenses, commissions, printing, binding, et cetera, and we have left for our profit seventy thousand dollars!”[!”]
“Nothing can be plainer,” said Pompilard.
“But the publisher would want the lion’s share of that,” interposed Melissa.
“Pooh! What do you know about it?” retorted Pompilard. “If we get up the work by subscription, we can take an office and do our own publishing.”