Do your work, the great work that is in you to do; and if the rewards come slowly, never mind! in your old age you will look back to these days of effort as the sweetest of your life! Yes!" and the pious publisher's eyes moisten at his own eloquence, "in the sunset of your career, when you have made an assured name, and, let us hope, an assured fortune also, you will remember this time of grand struggle and endeavour! God bless you!" The benediction is here uttered abruptly, as if the pious publisher couldn't help it. It bursts from his manly bosom like a bomb-shell. His pent-up emotion finds vent in it; his swelling liberality of disposition is relieved by it. Meanwhile, the small author sits silent, curiously disconcerted, and uncomfortably conscious that his face wears a somewhat foolish expression. He doesn't want to look foolish, but he knows he does. He is aware that the pious publisher has flattered him, but somehow he does not like to admit that the flattery is more than kindly and judicious praise. But, all the same, he ponders in a dismal sort of way on those phrases "in your old age" and "the sunset of your career." What! Is he, then, not to experience any of the joys or luxuries of life till he is such a doddering old idiot as to be only fit to jabber "reminiscences"? Is he to have no rest or physical comfort in existence till his strength fails and his mental faculties decay? Is his fortune only to be "assured" at a time when his chief needs are a bed, an armchair, and a basin of gruel or "infant's food"? The pious publisher implies as much. It is strange, and perhaps wickedly ungrateful of the poor small author, but he does not care about the "sunset" prospect in the least. He would rather be happy and well fed while it is full day. And for the life of him he cannot help thinking how very excellently the pious publisher himself is housed. Pictures, books, statuary, horses--even a yacht--all these things have come to the pious publisher long before "sunset." And yet what can he, the poor small author, do? Nothing. He must consider himself lucky if he gets his work accepted on any terms. He can't afford to be his own publisher (not because of the expenses incurred in actually printing and binding, for these are slight), but because he would be considered an intruder and would have all the "publishers' rings" against him; and not only the publishers' rings, but the Circulating Library Ring and the Bookstall Ring; for England is a "free" country, and as a first consequence of its glorious liberty, every one that does honest work and seeks honest pay for the same, is the veriest slave that ever wore chains and manacles.