The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 1, April 1894 — John Shaqi
The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 1, April 1894
General
The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 1, April 1894
English literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
as to print on the right occasion a thing he hated. I had begun my visit
to Mr. Paraday on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his book came out. A
copy of it arrived by the first post, and he let me go out into the
garden with it immediately after breakfast. I read it from beginning to
end that day, and in the evening he asked me to remain with him the rest
of the week and over the Sunday.
That night my manuscript came back from Mr. Pinhorn, accompanied with a
letter, of which the gist was the desire to know what I meant by sending
him such stuff. That was the meaning of the question, if not exactly its
form, and it made my mistake immense to me. Such as this mistake was I
could now only look it in the face and accept it. I knew where I had
failed, but it was exactly where I couldn't have succeeded. I had been
sent down there to be personal, and in point of fact I hadn't been
personal at all; what I had sent up to London was merely a little
finicking, feverish study of my author's talent. Anything less relevant
to Mr. Pinhorn's purpose couldn't well be imagined, and he was visibly
angry at my having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket)
approached the object of our arrangement only to be so deucedly distant.
For myself, I knew but too well what had happened, and how a miracle--as
pretty as some old miracle of legend--had been wrought on the spot to
save me. There had been a big brush of wings, the flash of an opaline
robe, and then, with a great cool stir of the air, the sense of an
angel's having swooped down and caught me to his bosom. He held me only
till the danger was over, and it all took place in a minute. With my
manuscript back on my hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the
reflections I made on it are what I meant, at the beginning of this
anecdote, by my change of heart. Mr. Pinhorn's note was not only a
rebuke decidedly stern, but an invitation immediately to send him (it
was the case to say so) the genuine article, the revealing and
reverberating sketch to the promise of which--and of which alone--I owed
my squandered privilege. A week or two later I recast my peccant paper,
and giving it a particular application to Mr. Paraday's new book,
obtained for it the hospitality of another journal, where, I must admit,
Mr. Pinhorn was so far justified that it attracted not the least
attention.
III
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