"I shouldn't mind," he interjected on my reverie, "but these papers issue such lamentable stuff! Such vapid essays, such aimless stories, such bread-and-butter school-girl poetry,--'sing' and 'spring,' 'bird' and 'heard,'--not an elevating idea or thought through the whole thing from beginning to end; and then look at these: 'We consider your story too long;' 'We regret that the style of your article is unsuited to our pages;' 'We see some promise in your poem, but it is not quite up to the level of our requirements;' 'Try blank verse.... We shall be glad to hear from you again.' Did you ever hear such mockery, and these very men printing such intolerable rubbish!" Of course, he never thought of the poor editor, leaning over his chair in a brown study, biting the pen-handle, and wondering how he can please "A Constant Subscriber," who objects to the rather light nature of the articles he is now giving to the public; or, "Sacerdos," who does not like poetry; or, "Senex," who asks sarcastically: Is he putting himself in rivalry with the "Edinburgh" or "Quarterly," or who the mischief cares one brass pin about "Aristotle's Constitution of Athens;" and wouldn't he give them something light and agreeable to help to digest their dinners? Oh no! he only thought then and there that there should be an _auto da fe_,--a summary crematory process of all the editors under the sun. "Look here, young man," said I, at last, "there is only one thing for you to do. You must write a book." "Look here, Father Dan," said he, "I'm not in much humor for joking. Any priest that would attempt to write a book nowadays should have the spirit of the martyrs, who stepped onto the sands in the Coliseum and saw the brutal Romans in the _auditorium_ and wild beasts in the cages beneath!" "Well, my dear boy," I replied, "you _will_ write the book; but for goodness' sake write it in your present humor, before the fires die down." He laughed. "Write a book? What in the world should I write about? The world is deluged and drowned by books. And if I wrote it, who could or would publish it? Imagine me hawking around a wretched manuscript from publisher to publisher, until it was tattered, yellow, and undecipherable. Why, the big London fellows accept only ten MSS. out of five hundred on the average, and you know I cannot publish at my own risk." "Who the mischief spoke about publishing?" I replied, trying to keep up the flame; "I only asked you to write. Write, write, write, and leave the publishing to God." "And what am I to write about? Every subject under the sun is threshed out and threadbare, from the origin of ideas down to the microbe of typhoid fever. Not at all; the world is grown too wise for books; we must devise something else."