Recollections of a Varied Life

by George Cary Eggleston

"There," said Joe Harper when I had finished the letter. "I really didn't think you that sort of a person."

"What did you say to him by way of reply?" I asked.

Joe Harper's Masterpiece

"I'll show you," he said, taking up his letter-book. "I inclosed a copy of that intolerably long opinion of yours and wrote this." Then he let me read the letter. In it he thanked the gentleman for having brought the dereliction of the reader to the attention of the house, but suggested that before proceeding to extreme measures in such a case, he thought it well to be perfectly sure of the facts. To that end, he wrote, he inclosed an exact copy of the "opinion" on which the novel had been declined, and asked the author to read it and report whether or not he still felt certain that the writer of the opinion had condemned the work unread.

The entire letter was written in a tone of submissive acceptance of the rejected author's judgment in the case. As a whole it seemed to me as withering a piece of sarcasm as I ever read, and in spite of the injustice he had sought to do me. I was distinctly sorry for the man to whom it was addressed. I suppose Mr. Harper felt in the same way, but all that he said, as he put the letter-book upon his desk, was:

"I hope he prepares his sermon early in the week, for that letter of mine must have reached him about Friday morning, and it may have created a greater or less disturbance in his mind."

A few days later there came a reply. The author said that an examination of the "opinion" left no room for doubt that the work had been read with care throughout, but that he had confidently believed otherwise when he wrote his first letter. He explained that before sending the manuscript he had tied a peculiar cord around it, inside the wrapper, and that when it came back to him with the same cord tied about it, he thought it certain that the package had never been opened. He was sorry he had made a mistake, of course, but he had been entirely sincere, etc., etc.

Mr. Harper indulged himself in an answer to all this. If I had not been permitted to read it, I should never have believed that anything so caustic could have been uttered by a man so genially good-tempered as I knew Mr. Harper to be. It was all the more effective because from beginning to end there was no trace of excitement, no touch of anger, no word or phrase in it that could be criticised as harsh or intemperate.

Beneath the complaint made by the clerical author in that case there was a mistaken assumption with which every publisher and every editor is familiar—the assumption, namely, that the publisher or editor to whom unsolicited manuscripts are sent is under some sort of moral obligation to read them or have them read. Of course no such obligation exists. When the publisher or editor is satisfied that he does not wish to purchase a manuscript, it makes no manner of difference by what process he has arrived at that conclusion. The subject of the book or article may be one that he does not care to handle; the author's manner, as revealed in the early pages of his manuscript, may justify rejection without further reading. Any one of a score of reasons may be conclusive without the necessity of examining the manuscript in whole or even in part. I once advised the rejection of a book without reading it, on the ground that the woman who wrote it used a cambric needle and milk instead of a pen and ink, so that it would be a gross immorality to put her manuscript into the hands of printers whose earnings depended upon the number of ems they could set in a day.