_An Honest Log-Roller._
Louis Maunders was writing an anonymous novel, and a large circle offriends and acquaintances expected it to make a big hit. LouisMaunders was so modest that he distrusted his own opinion, and wasglad to find his friends sharing it in this matter. It strengthenedhim. He carried the manuscript unostentatiously about in a long briefbag, while the book was writing, and worked at it during all his sparemoments. Even in omnibuses he was to be seen scribbling hard with astylus, and neglecting to attend to the conductor. The plot of thestory was sad and heartrending, for Louis was only twenty-one. Louisrefused to give those roseate pictures of life which the conventionalnovelist turns out to please the public. He objected to "happyendings." In real life, he said, no story ends happily; for the end ofeverybody's story is Death. In this book he said some bitter thingsabout Life which it would have winced to hear, had it been alive. Asfor Death, he doubted whether it was worth dying. Towards Nature hetook a tone of haughty superiority, and expressed himselfdisrespectfully on the subject of Fate. He mocked at it through thelips of his hero, and altogether seemed qualifying for the livercomplaint, which is the Prometheus myth done into modern English. Hetaught that the only Peace for man lies in snapping the fingers atFortune, taking her buffets and her favours with equal contempt, andgenerally teaching her to know her place. The soul of thePhilosopher, he said, would stand grinning cynically though theplanetary system were sold off by auction. These lessons were taughtwith great tragic power in Maunders' novel, and he was looking forwardto the time when it should be in print, and on all the carpets ofconversation. He was extremely gratified to find his friends thinkingso well of its prospects, for it was pleasing to him to discover thathe had chosen his circle so well, and had such intelligent friends. Itdid not seem to him at all unlikely that he would make his fortunewith this novel; and he hurried on with it, till the masterpieceneeded only a few final touches and a few last insults to Fate. Thenhe left the bag in a hansom cab. When he remembered his forgetfulness,he was distracted. He raved like a maniac--and like a maniac did noteven write his ravings down for after use. He applied at ScotlandYard, but the superintendent said that drivers brought there onlyarticles of value. He sent paragraphs to the papers, asking even ofthe _Echo_ where his lost novel was. But the _Echo_ answered not.Several spiteful papers insinuated that he was a liar, and ahigh-class comic paper went out of its way to make a joke, and to callhis book "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab." The annoying part of thebusiness was that after getting all this gratuitous advertisement, initself enough to sell two editions, the book still refused to come upfor publication. Maunders was too heart-broken to write another. Formonths he went about, a changed being. He had put the whole of himselfinto that book, and it was lost. He mourned for the departedmanuscript, and generously extolled its virtues. For years he remainedfaithful to its memory; and its pages were made less dry with histears. But the most intemperate grief wears itself out at last; andafter a few years of melancholy, Maunders rallied and became acritic.
THE GREAT CRITIC.]
As a critic he set in with great severity, and by carefully refrainingfrom doing anything himself, gained a great reputation far and wide.In due course he joined the staff of the _Acadaeum_, where his signedcontributions came to be looked for with profound respect by thepublic and with fear and trembling by authors. For Maunders' criticismwas so very superior, even for the _Acadaeum_, of which the trade mottowas "Stop here for Criticism--superior to anything in the literarymarket." Maunders flayed and excoriated Marsyas till the worldaccepted him as Apollo.
What Maunders was most down upon was novel-writing. Not having tofollow them himself, he had high ideals of art; and woe to theunfortunate author who thought he had literary and artistic instinctwhen he had only pen and paper. Maunders was especially severe uponthe novels of young authors, with their affected style and jejuneideas. Perhaps the most brilliant criticism he ever wrote was amerciless dissection of a book of this sort, reeking with theinsincerity and crudity of youth, full of accumulated ignorance oflife, and brazening it out by flashy cynicism.
A week after this notice appeared, his oldest and dearest friendcalled upon him and asked him for an explanation.
"What do you mean?" said Maunders.
"When I read your slashing notice of 'A Fingersnap for Fate,' I atonce got the book."
"What! After I had disembowelled it; after I had shown it was a stalesausage stuffed with old and putrid ideas?"
"Well, to tell the truth," said his friend, a little crestfallen athaving to confess, "I always get the books you pitch into. So do lotsof people. We are only plain, ordinary, homespun people, you know; sowe feel sure that whatever you praise will be too superior for us,while what you condemn will suit us to a _t_. That is why the greatpublic studies and respects your criticisms. You are our literarypastor and monitor. Your condemnation is our guide-post, and yourpraise is our _Index Expurgatorius_. But for you we should be lost inthe wilderness of new books."
"And this is all the result of my years of laborious criticism," fumedthe _Acadaeum_ critic. "Proceed, sir."
"Well, what I came to say was, that if my memory does not play me atrick after all these years, 'A Fingersnap for Fate' is your long-lostnovel."
"What!" shrieked the great critic; "my long-lost child! Impossible."
"Yes," persisted his oldest and dearest friend. "I recognised it bythe strawberry mark in Cap. II., where the hero compares the youngergeneration to fresh strawberries smothered in stale cream. I rememberyour reading it to me!"
"Heavens! The whole thing comes back to me," cried the critic. "Now Iknow why I damned it so unmercifully for plagiarism! All the while Iwas reading it, there was a strange, haunting sense of familiarity."
"But, surely you will expose the thief!"
"How can I? It would mean confessing that I wrote the book myself.That I slated it savagely, is nothing. That will pass as a good joke,if not a piece of rare modesty. But confess myself the author of sucha wretched failure!"
"Excuse me," said his friend. "It is not a failure. It is a verypopular success. It is selling like wildfire. Excuse the inaccuratesimile; but you know what I mean. Your notice has sent the sale uptremendously. Ever since your notice appeared, the printing presseshave been going day and night and are utterly unable to cope with thedemand. Oh, you must not let a rogue make a fortune out of you likethis. That would be too sinful."
So the great critic sought out the thief. And they divided theprofits. And then the thief, who was a fool as well as a rogue, wroteanother book--all out of his own head this time. And the critic slatedit. And they divided the profits.