The Professor bristled. "If it were the straw of wild oats three times threshed, it would still hold more value than the chaff that blows about in your empty skull. Keep your place, which means—distance."
He was serious; he felt it and gloated over it with a solemn pride. But before the train reached the city he begged the fellow's pardon. "I am worn out with hard work," he said, "and I hope you will forget my harshness."
Cabmen bellowed at him as he passed out of the station, and ragged boys guyed him as he walked along the street. He had a list of the subscription book publishers, and decided to submit his favor to the nearest one. The elevator boy put him off on the wrong floor. A scrub-woman looked up and leered at him. "Poverty, like anger, hath a privilege," he mused. He found the publisher's quarters, but waited a long time before he was admitted to the presence of the manager. The great man was closeted with a book agent. In the subscription book house the author is nothing; the agent everything. The manager has been an agent, or perhaps a "fake" advertising man. He hates an author; he hated the Professor at sight, and flouted when he learned that the scholar had brought a book. What an insult! The idea of bringing a book to a publishing house! The Professor attempted to explain the scope of his work. The manager drew back. "No need to unwrap it," he said. "We've got more books now than we can sell. Say," he bawled, to some one outside his den, "tell Ritson I want to see him before he goes."
"I thought," began the Professor, bowing;—but the manager shut him off. "We do our own thinking," he said.
"Well, sir, I shall bid you good-morning."
"Yes. Say," he shouted, "tell Bruck I want to see him, too."
The list was followed, and a night of sorrow fell at the end of a heart-breaking day. Not in all instances had the publishers been gruff; some had spoken kindly, one had looked at the manuscript, and then had shown the Professor a bank of books written on the same line. At last, worn out with serving as pall-bearer to his own dead spirit, he offered the book for enough money to pay his life insurance. The publisher shook his head. Old, old story, gathering mold.