For nearly three months now an eminent editor had been trying to summon up the courage to accept “The Hearer of Truth”. He had written several letters to tell the author how good a work it was; and now that it was to be definitely rejected, he soothed his conscience by inviting the author to lunch. The function came off at one of the most august and stately of the city’s clubs, a marble building near Fifth Avenue, where Thyrsis, with a new clean collar, and his worn shoes newly shined, passed under the suspicious eyes of the liveried menials, and was ushered before the eminent editor. About the vast room were portraits of bygone dignitaries; and there were great leather-upholstered arm-chairs in which one might see the dignitaries of the present--some of them with little tables at their sides, and decanters and soda and cracked ice. They went into the dining-room, where everyone spoke and ate in whispers, and the waiters flitted about like black and white ghosts; and while Thyrsis consumed a cupful of cold _bouillon_, and a squab _en casserole_, and a plate of what might be described as an honorific salad, he listened to the soft-voiced editor discussing the problem of his future career. The editor’s theme was what the public wanted. The world had existed for a long time, it seemed, and was not easily to be changed; it was necessary for an author to take its prejudices into consideration--especially if he was young, and unknown, and--er--dependent upon his own resources. It seemed to Thyrsis, as he listened, that the great man must have arranged this luncheon as a stage-setting for his remarks--planning it on purpose to light a blaze of bitterness in the soul of the hungry poet. “Look at me,” he seemed to say--“this is the way the job is done. Once I was poor and unknown like you--actually, though you might not credit it, a raw boy from the country. But I had taste and talent, and I was judicious; and so now for thirty years I have been at the head of one of the country’s leading magazines. And see--by my mere word I am able to bring you here into the very citadel of power! For these men about you are the masters of the metropolis. There is a rich publisher--his name is a household word--and you saw how he touched me on the shoulder. There is an ex-mayor of the city--you saw how he nodded to me! Yonder is the head of one of the oldest and most exclusive of the city’s landed families--even with him I am acquainted! And this is power! You may know it by all these signs of mahogany furniture, and leather upholstery, and waiters of reverential deportment. You may know it by the signs of respectability and awesomeness and chaste abundance. Make haste to pay homage to it, and enroll yourself in its service!”