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"There's a friend o' mine," continued Melky, "wholesale jeweller, down Shoreditch way, wants to get out a catalogue. He ain't no lit'ry powers, d'you see? Now, he'd run to a fiver cash down if some writing feller 'ud touch things up a bit for him, like. Lor' bless you! it wouldn't take you more'n a day's work! What d'ye say to it?"
"'Very good, melad, ses the capt'in, 'I relies on you, Joe. 'E always did and would you believe it, I upped an' 'ooked that there great rattlesnake out of the boiler with an old hum-brella!" There was a clerk who stood six-foot eight who was something of a "knut." He told me that at home he belonged to a "Lit'ry Society," and I asked him what books they had and which he liked. "'Ow d'yow mean?"
Some of them, like the "lit'ry society" clerk, had never seen much of life or people; had lived in a little suburban villa and pretended to be "City men." Others had knocked about all over the world. These were mostly seafaring men. Savage was such a one. He was one of the buccaneer type, strong and sunburnt, with tattooed arms.
M. De l'Isle shook his head and then a stiff finger: "I tell you! They are sicretly inquiring Thorndyke-Smith lit'ry magnet to fine out if we are truz'-worthy! And tha'z the miztake we did -not sen'ing the photograph of Mlle. Aline ad the biggening. But tha'z not yet too late; we can wire them from firz' drug-store, 'Suspen' judgment! Portrait of authorezz coming!"
Also, same time, he got another twenty quid for two of his lit'ry works stories, mister. Mister! I wish he'd got your money and the other money just an hour before it come to hand! S'elp me! if them there letters had only come in by one post earlier, it 'ud ha' saved a heap o' trouble!" "I haven't the remotest notion of what you're talking about, you know," said Purdie good-naturedly.
These "lit'ry fellows," cajoled by one of their own ilk into this unspeakable muddle, were, after all, he reflected, of the sort he had scorned with all his sailor repugnance to airs and pretensions. Cap'n Sproul possessed a peculiarly grim sense of humor. This indignant assemblage appealed to that sense.
"He sets there hours at a time, like a hen squattin' on duck-eggs, lookin' up cross-eyed. I was through an insane horsepittle once, and they had patients there just like that. I'd just as soon have a bullhead snake in the room with me." "He's gettin' up his pome, that's all," Hiram explained. "I've seen lit'ry folks in my time. They act queer, but there ain't any harm in 'em."
He'd landed one book and was pluggin' away on another; not a novel, I understands, but something different. "Huh!" says I to Vee. "No wonder he had to go into the lit'ry game, with that monicker hung on him. Basil Pyne! The worst of it is, he looks it, too." "Now, Torchy!" protests Vee. "I'm sure you'll find him real interesting when you know him better." As usual, she's right.
I prepared an Essy on Animals to read before the Social Science meetins. It is a subjeck I may troothfully say I have successfully wrastled with. I tackled it when only nineteen years old. At that tender age I writ a Essy for a lit'ry Institoot entitled, "Is Cats to be trusted?"
They're lit'ry gents, and he's done all the official business with them." Broadway stared at him, and then began to make some hasty figures. "See here, Cap'n," he said, plaintively, "there's just about enough of that fund left to settle the committee bill here at my store. Have I got to share pro raty?" "Pay yourself and clean it out. I'll countersign your bill," declared the chairman, cheerfully.
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