When this long article was done, he took it back to the office, and there found the Editor in yet a third mood. He was talking into the telephone, and begged his visitor to wait until he had done. My friend, therefore, took up a copy of the Spectator, and attempted to distract his attention with the masterful irony and hard crystalline prose of that paper.
Soon the Editor turned to him and said that Pschuffer’s had just let him know by the telephone that they would not advertise after all.
It was now necessary to delete all that there might be upon snails in his article, to head the remainder “My Kentish Home,” and to send it immediately to “Life in the Open.” This done, he sat down and wrote upon a scrap of paper in the office the following revised notice, which the Editor glanced at and approved:—
“The Snail: Its Habitat, &c. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d.
“This work will, perhaps, appeal to specialists. This journal does not profess any capacity of dealing with it, but a glance at its pages is sufficient to show that it would be very ill-suited to ordinary readers. The illustrations are not without merit.”
Next morning he was somewhat perturbed to be called up again upon the telephone by the Editor, who spoke to him as follows:—
“I am very sorry, but I have just learnt a most important fact. Adam Charles is standing in our interests at Biggleton. Lord Bailey will be on the platform. You must write a long and favourable review of the book before twelve to-day, and do try and say a little about the author.”
He somewhat wearily took up a sheet of paper and wrote what follows:—a passage which I must again recommend to the student as a very admirable specimen of work upon these lines.
“The Snail: Its Habitat, &c. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d.
“This book comes at a most opportune moment. It is not generally known that Professor Charles was the first to point out the very great importance of the training of the mind in the education of children. It was in May, 1875, that he made this point in the presence of Mr. Gladstone, who was so impressed by the mingled enlightenment and novelty of the view, that he wrote a long and interesting postcard upon the author to a friend of the present writer. Professor Charles may be styled—nay, he styles himself—a ‘self-made man.’ Born in Huddersfield of parents who were weavers in that charming northern city, he was early fascinated by the study of natural science, and was admitted to the Alexandrovna University....”