Miss B. Really, Mr. Powers, your language is shocking to-day.
P. I can’t help it. Just think! In the last three days some score of rejected authors have been insisting on reasons, and I can’t give reasons. Mr. Greathead has forbidden it.
Miss B. But don’t you think an author is entitled to some consideration where his own hard labor is concerned?
P. Great Scott! If I tried to satisfy them all I’d be in an insane asylum before a month. They manage that better in the magazine department. Mr. Wright is a man of business. He has given orders to stop all authors in the vestibule, take their books away from them and show them out.
Enter William, R., carrying enormous armful of MSS. in packages and envelopes. Some fall to floor. Puts them on P.’s desk. A roll remains on floor.
P. (Groans.) Look at that pile, one mail!
William. (Aside.) That’ll make the old man sweat. (Starts out and stumbles over roll, falls sprawling.)
P. Look at your carelessness! Pick that up. The dunce has rolled it. The magazine department refuses to look at anything that is rolled. But I am a drudge. I have to do it. Greathead is too easy.
Miss B. But our letters, Mr. Powers,—
P. (Groans.) I’ll make them short. (Dictates.) “Mr. Arthur Welby, Mount Hope, Ill.—You had better move to mount Despair—”