“Come with me,” he said.
Gifted followed him into a dingy apartment in the attic, where one sat at a great table heaped and piled with manuscripts. By him was a huge basket, ha'f full of manuscripts also. As they entered he dropped another manuscript into the basket and looked up.
“Tell me,” said Gifted, “what are these papers, and who is he that looks upon them and drops them into the basket?”
“These are the manuscript poems that we receive, and the one sitting at the table is commonly spoken of among us as 'The Butcher'. The poems he drops into the basket are those rejected as of no account.”
“But does he not read the poems before he rejects them?”
“He tastes them. Do you eat a cheese before you buy it?”
“And what becomes of all those that he drops into the basket?”
“If they are not claimed by their author in proper season, they go to the devil.”
“What!” said Gifted, with his eyes stretched very round.
“To the paper factory, where they have a horrid machine they call the devil, that tears everything to bits,—as the critics treat our authors, sometimes, sometimes, Mr. Hopkins.”