Miss B. (Glancing round.) He’s in a bad humor this morning. Some poor author will suffer for it. (To P.) Found anything good, Mr. Powers?
Powers. Such books! Such inanity. Are all the fools in the country turning authors?
Miss B. (Laughing.) Why, Mr. Powers, you forget you are an author yourself.
P. No, Miss Bodman, I do not forget it. Here I am, a man of genius, capable of winning the admiration of two hemispheres, who has in fact surprised the civilized world already, compelled to earn my bread by delving among the rubbish of a literary muck-heap.
Miss B. Why don’t you quit that and let your own genius loose?
P. Humph! A book like my “Countess Margo, or A Romance of two Castles,” has no chance of winning in this money-grubbing day. People don’t know poetry, romance, pathos, and sympathy when they see it. Genius is extinguished amid the meretricious glitterings of fad literature.
Miss B. Fie, Mr. Powers, I really believe you are jealous of Mrs. Upperdyke Fadd, whose last novel “Sweet Jingles Jangled” set everybody wild.
P. Miss Bodman, I hope I shall never be guilty of jealousy of Mrs. Fadd. Why, my book, “A Romance of Two Castles,” is a prose idyl. It is as different from Mrs. Fadd’s “Sweet Jingles Jangled” as Confucius is different from Brigham Young.
Miss B. Oh, what a comparison! I do admire your command of language!