"WRITING HERRICK"
"This room," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, "is at present devoted to the British poets. There have been a great many bad poets in Britain who have become immortal, and we are trying to make them good. That young man over there with red hair is rewriting Burns—the introduction we are doing in our essay-room. The young lady in blue glasses is doing Gay over again; and we have intrusted our Lang edition of Herrick to the retired clergyman whom you see sitting on that settee by the window with a slate on his lap. To show you how completely we do our work, let me tell you that in this case of Herrick all his poems were first copied off on slates by our ordinary copyists, so that the clergyman who is doing them over again has only to wet his finger to rub out what might strike some people as an immortal line."
"It's a splendid idea!" I cried. "But wouldn't a blackboard prove less expensive?"
"We never consider expense," said Miss Phipps-Phipps. "We really do not have to. You see, with a capacity of 800,000,000 words a year at the rates for Lang, for which we pay at rates for the unknown, we are left with a margin of profit which pleases our stockholders and does not arouse the cupidity of other authors."
"What a wonderful system!" said I.
"We think it so," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, placidly.
"And do you never have any troubles?" I asked.
"Oh yes," replied my hostess. "Only last week the Grass of Parnassus and Blue Ballade employees rose up and struck for sixpence more per quatrain. We locked them out, and to-day have filled their places with equally competent employees. You can always find plenty of unemployed and unpublished poets ready to step in. Our prose hands do not give us much trouble, and our revisers never say a word."