But the search for an English publisher was at first unsuccessful. Murray rejected it without even looking at it. The Longmans had it carefully examined, but decided against accepting it. Prescott was hurt by this rejection, the more so as he thought (quite incorrectly, as he afterward discovered) that it was Southey who had advised the Longmans not to publish it. The fact was that both of the firms just mentioned had refused it because their lists were then too full to justify them in undertaking a three-volume history. Prescott, for a time, experienced some hesitation in bringing it out at all. He had written on the day of its completion: "I should feel not only no desire, but a reluctance to publish, and should probably keep it by me for emendations and additions, were it not for the belief that the ground would be more or less occupied in the meantime by abler writers." The allusion here is to a history of the Spanish Arabs announced by Southey. But what really spurred Prescott on to give his book to the world was a quiet remark of his father's, in which there was something of a challenge and a taunt. "The man," said he, "who writes a book which he is afraid to publish is a coward." "Coward" was a name which no true Prescott could endure; and so, after some months of negotiation and reflection, an arrangement was made to have the history appear with the imprint of a newly founded publishing house, the American Stationers' Company of Boston, with which Prescott signed a contract in April, 1837. By the terms of this contract Prescott was to furnish the plates and also the engravings for the book, of which the company was to print 1250 copies and to have five years in which to sell them--surely a very modest bargain. But Prescott cared little for financial profits, nor was he wholly sanguine of the book's success. On the day after signing the contract, he wrote: "I must confess I feel some disquietude at the prospect of coming in full bodily presence before the public." And somewhat earlier he had written with a curious though genuine humility:--