‘You, now,’ pursued John, ‘what do you write about?’
‘Nothing in particular. I make a salable page or two out of whatever strikes my fancy.’
‘Exactly! You don’t even pretend that you’ve got anything to say. You live by inducing people to give themselves mental indigestion—and bodily, too, for that matter.’
‘Do you know, Mr Yule, that you have suggested a capital idea to me? If I were to take up your views, I think it isn’t at all unlikely that I might make a good thing of writing against writing. It should be my literary specialty to rail against literature. The reading public should pay me for telling them that they oughtn’t to read. I must think it over.’
‘Carlyle has anticipated you,’ threw in Alfred.
‘Yes, but in an antiquated way. I would base my polemic on the newest philosophy.’
He developed the idea facetiously, whilst John regarded him as he might have watched a performing monkey.
‘There again! your new philosophy!’ exclaimed the invalid. ‘Why, it isn’t even wholesome stuff, the kind of reading that most of you force on the public. Now there’s the man who has married one of my nieces—poor lass! Reardon, his name is. You know him, I dare say. Just for curiosity I had a look at one of his books; it was called “The Optimist.” Of all the morbid trash I ever saw, that beat everything. I thought of writing him a letter, advising a couple of anti-bilious pills before bedtime for a few weeks.’
Jasper glanced at Alfred Yule, who wore a look of indifference.
‘That man deserves penal servitude in my opinion,’ pursued John. ‘I’m not sure that it isn’t my duty to offer him a couple of hundred a year on condition that he writes no more.’