I thought I saw the bronze god Asamra (he who may speak but once in a thousand years, and whose friendship I keep by making time stand still for him in the stopping of the clock and its turning back) shake his head in doubt as I put the manuscript into its wrappings and addressed it to the publisher.
"Well?" I inquired, testily.
"Suppose They do not like it?" sighed the god.
"Why should They not?" demanded I, loftily.
"It has, among other unusualities, (I hope you like the gentleness of the word!) those dashes which—You ought to have learned by this time that They don't like to read over dashes."
"Why not?" asked I, again. "I like them. And, they are my own!"
"Well, you know a dash necessitates lucubration. It stands for something which you trust your reader to supply. That is unfair. If you are writing a book and receiving an honorarium for it, do not expect him to do it. It is a bit like eating. One does not go to a restaurant, and pay for his food, then cook it himself."
"I have seen it done," cried I, "by particular people!"
"Ahem!" murmured the polite god: more polite on this day than I had recently observed him—which meant some sort of propaganda.
"It is not an ahem!" I went on in the unregenerate heat which the friction of the god often engendered in me. "Have you never seen it done?"