Jack was too full to speak. "Provided I would introduce a proper love-plot, and make it into three volumes post octavo, twenty-three lines in a page, neither more nor less. One honest fellow at last was found who seemed to me a very respectable and indeed enterprising person. And after going through a list of calculations, which showed that no possible profit could arise, he generously offered to give me half of those no-profits, provided I would guarantee half the very visible expenses. I was just meditating the prudence of accepting this proposal, when your uncle was seized with a sublime idea, which has whisked up my book in a whirlwind of expectation." "And that idea?" said I, despondently. "That idea," quoth Uncle Jack, recovering himself, "is simply and shortly this. From time immemorial, authors have been the prey of the publishers. Sir, authors have lived in garrets, nay, have been choked in the street by an unexpected crumb of bread, like the man who wrote the play, poor fellow!" "Otway," said my father. "The story is not true,--no matter." "Milton, sir, as everybody knows, sold 'Paradise Lost' for ten pounds,-- ten pounds, Sir! In short, instances of a like nature are too numerous to quote.--But the booksellers, sir, they are leviathans; they roll in seas of gold; they subsist upon authors as vampires upon little children. But at last endurance has reached its limit; the fiat has gone forth; the tocsin of liberty has resounded: authors have burst their fetters. And we have just inaugurated the institution of 'The Grand Anti-Publisher Confederate Authors' Society,' by which, Pisistratus, by which, mark you, every author is to be his own publisher; that is, every author who joins the society. No more submission of immortal works to mercenary calculators, to sordid tastes; no more hard bargains and broken hearts; no more crumbs of bread choking great tragic poets in the streets; no more Paradises Lost sold at L10 a- piece! The author brings his book to a select committee appointed for the purpose,--men of delicacy, education, and refinement, authors themselves; they read it, the society publish; and after a modest deduction, which goes towards the funds of the society, the treasurer hands over the profits to the author." "So that, in fact, uncle, every author who can't find a publisher anywhere else will of course come to the society. The fraternity will be numerous." "It will indeed." "And the speculation--ruinous." "Ruinous, why?" "Because in all mercantile negotiations it is ruinous to invest capital in supplies which fail of demand. You undertake to publish books that booksellers will not publish: why? Because booksellers can't sell them. It's just probable that you'll not sell them any better than the booksellers. Ergo, the more your business, the larger your deficit; and the more numerous your society, the more disastrous your condition. Q. E. D."