"Have you any novelties in hand?" I asked.
"Oh yes," said Miss Phipps-Phipps. "We are going to supersede Boswell with Lang's Johnson. We are preparing a Lang Shakespeare; and when the copyrights on Thackeray and Dickens have expired, we'll do them all over again. Then we are experimenting in colors for a new fairy-book; and our chromatic Bibles will be a great thing. We are also contemplating an offer to the French Academy to permit all the works of its members to be issued as ours. I really think that Daudet by Andrew Lang would pay. Hugo by Lang might prove too much for the British public, but we shall do it, because we have confidence in ourselves. We shall issue the Philosophy of Schopenhauer by Andrew Lang next week."
"How about our American authors?" I queried. "Are you going to rewrite any of them?"
"Who are they?" asked Miss Phipps-Phipps, with an admirable expression of ingenuousness.
"Well," said I, "myself, and—ah—Edgar Poe."
"Any poets?" said Miss Phipps-Phipps.
"Some," I answered. "Myself and—ah—Longfellow."
"I don't know," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, becoming somewhat reserved. "Send me your manuscripts. I have heard of you, of course—but—ah—who is Miss Longfellow?"
I contented myself with a reference to the scenery, and then I said: "Miss Double Phipps, I wish you would conduct me into the presence of Mr. Lang. I like him as a manly man, and I love him for the books he has put forth, which not only show his manliness, but his appreciation of everything in letters that is good."