So Thyrsis went home, and tried to forget his rage in the work of disposing of his hundred copies. He had prepared himself for the possibility of everything else failing, but here he had a plan whereby he felt that his deliverance was assured. He had made up a list of a hundred of the best-known men of letters in the country--college presidents and professors, editors and clergymen, novelists and poets and critics; and he had done more hack-work, and earned the twenty dollars it would take to send to each of them a copy of the book, together with his manifesto, and a little type-written note. This, he felt, would make certain of the book’s being read; and once let the book be read by the real leaders of the country’s thought, and his siege would be at an end! So the packages went to the post-office, freighted with the burden of his hopes and longings. And two or three times a week Thyrsis went to see his publishers, and find out how the book was going. He was never able to ascertain just what they were doing with it, or how they expected to sell it; Mr. Taylor would tell him vaguely that it was doing fairly well--the season was “slow”, and he must give the book time to “catch on”. And then came the reviews. A clipping-bureau had written, offering to furnish them at five cents apiece; and this was moderate, considering that there were only a dozen altogether. Most of these were from unimportant out-of-town papers, whose book-reviews are written by the high-school nieces and the elderly maiden-aunts of the publishers. Of the metropolitan newspapers and literary organs, only three noticed the book at all; and two of these gave perfunctory mention, evidently made up from the publisher’s statement on the cover. The third writer had connected the book with the interview in the “Morning Howl”, and he wrote a burlesque review of it, in which he hailed it as the “Great American Novel”. His method was to retell the story, quoting the most highly-wrought passages, with just enough comment to keep it in the vein of farce. To Thyrsis this mockery came like a blast of fire in the face; he did not know that it was the regular method of the newspaper--a method by means of which it had made itself known as the cleverest and most readable paper in the country. Section 3. All this was the harder for him, because it came at a black and spectral hour of his life. It was not enough that the book was falling flat, and that all their hopes were collapsing; a new and most terrible calamity befell them. For three months now they had been dissolved in the bliss of their young dream of love; and now suddenly had come a thunderbolt, splitting the darkness about them, and revealing the grim hand of Fate closing down!