“But that is the most expensive way of seeing mistakes. I will read this carefully, and I will send you word to-morrow what I think of it.”
“What makes you so quick at these things?” asked George, as he rose to go.
“Habit. I read manuscript novels for a publishing house here. I do it in the evening, when I can find time. Yes—it is hard work, but it is interesting. I am both prophet and historian. The book is the reality which I see alternately from the point of view of the future and the past.”
The result was that Johnson, who possessed much more real power than George had imagined, wrote a note, with which the manuscript was sent, and to George’s amazement the paper was at once accepted and put into type, and the proofs were sent to him. Moreover the number of the magazine in which his composition appeared was no sooner published than he received a cheque, of which the amount at once demonstrated the practical advantages of original writing as compared with those of second-rate criticism.
With regard to the attention attracted by his article, however, George was bitterly disappointed. He was on the alert for the daily papers in which an account of the contents of the periodicals is generally given, and he expected at least a paragraph from each.
In the first one he took up, after an elaborate notice of articles by known persons, he found the following line:—
“Mr. George Winton Wood airs his views upon criticism in the present number.”
That was all. There was not a remark, nor a hint at the contents of his paper, nothing to break the icy irony of the statement. He pondered long over the words, and then crammed the open sheet into the waste-paper basket. This was the first. There might be better in store for him. On the evening of the same day he found another.
“An unknown writer has an article upon criticism,” said the oracle, without further comment.
This was, if possible, worse. George felt inclined to write to the editor and request that his name might be mentioned. It was a peculiarly hard case, as he had reviewed books for this very paper during the last two years, and was well known in the office. The third remark was in one of those ghastly-spritely medleys written under the heading of “Chit-Chat.”