It is no wonder, he said, if such a manuscript
be at once tossed aside with an imprecation. Legibility is the first and
intelligibility the only other thing rendered due by the submission of a
manuscript to any publisher.
Hector spent a day or two in remodeling and modifying the passages
remarked upon by his wife and his friend, and then, with hope reviving
in both their hearts, the manuscript was sent in, acknowledged, and the
day appointed when an answer would be ready.
Upon a certain dark morning, therefore, in November, having nothing else
whatever to do, Hector set out in his much-worn Inverness cape to call
upon his former publisher in the City, with whom of late he had had no
communication. The weather was cold and damp, threatening rain. But
Hector was too much of a Scotchman to care about weather, and too full
of anxiety to mind either cold or wet. He had, indeed, almost always
felt gloomy weather exciting rather than depressing. For one thing, it
seemed, when he was indoors, to close him about with protection from
uncongenial interruption, leaving the freer his inventive faculty; and
now that he was abroad in it, and no inventive faculty left awake, it
seemed to clothe him with congenial sympathy, for the weather was just
the same inside him. And now, as he strode along with his eyes on the
ground, he scarcely saw any of the objects about him, but sought only
the heart of the City, where he hoped to find the publisher in his
office, ready to print his manuscript, and advance him a small sum in
anticipation of possible profit.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68