"Give me Charles Reade, sir," said Gilead Beck. "He is the novelist they like on our side."
"I am afraid I could not persuade him to come; though he might be pleased to see you if you would call at his house, perhaps. However, Beck, the great thing is"—he folded up his list and placed it in his pocket-book—"that you shall have a dinner of authors as good as any that sat down to the Lord Mayor's spread last year. Authors of all sorts, and the very best. None of your unknown little hungry anonymous beggars who write novels in instalments for weekly papers. Big men, sir, with big names. Men you'll be proud to know. And they shall be asked for next Wednesday."
"That gives only four days. It's terrible sudden," said Gilead Beck. He shook his head with as much gravity as if he was going to be hanged in four days. Then he sat down and began to write the names of his guests.
"Professor Huxley," he said, looking up. "I suppose I can buy that clergyman's sermons? And the Universal Genius who reels out the historical romances, Mr. Darwin? I shall get his works, too. And there's Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Robert Browning——"
"What are you going to do?"
"Well, Mr. Dunquerque, I am going to devote the next four days, from morning till night, to solid preparation for that evening. I shall go out right away, and I shall buy every darned book those great men have written; and if I sit up every night over the job, I'm bound to read every word."
"Oh!" said Jack. "Then I advise you to begin with Robert Browning."
"The light and graceful verse that everybody can understand? I will," said Gilead Beck. "They shall not find me unacquainted with their poems. Mr. Dunquerque, for the Lord's sake don't tell them it was all crammed up in four days."
"Not I. But—I say—you know, authors don't like to talk about their own books."
"That's the modesty of real genius," said the American, with admiration.