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That a book-maker should blaspheme high civilization, by which alone he exists, and one of whose diseases and flying pains he is, neither surprised nor moved him; but that any human being's actions should be affected by such tempestuous twaddle was ridiculous. And that the witty Lady Barbara should be caught by this chaff was intolerable; he began to feel bitter.
Charles Mackay, nor the cleverish magic-lantern pictures of that good-natured book-maker, Mr. Anthony Trollope, would be perfectly fitted with this polite addition. It is no mean praise to say that the word gentlemanly naturally applies itself to a traveller's work.
A practised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation, criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out of other people's critical remarks on Shakespeare, philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his conceptions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable depth somewhere.
There were few better runners in Dalton than my companion and myself, and we gained on the book-maker, who had probably trained on gin and bad tobacco, hand over hand. As we drew near him he turned round and inquired, with many expletives, made half inarticulate by want of breath, what we wanted with a gentleman engaged on his own private affairs.
The book-maker turned livid, I never saw a man in such a funk in my life, and produced a greasy pocket-book, out of which he took Richard's bank-note, and ten quite new ones; and I noticed there were more left, so that poverty was not his excuse for fraud. "Let me look at 'em against the sun," said the farmer, "to see as the water-mark is all right."
The flowing golden beard, the blue glasses, the padded clothes of middle-age cut were gone. Fritz Braun, lithe, sharp-faced, with piercing eyes, a dashing cavalry mustache, and dapper Wall Street tailoring, was twenty years younger, and another man. His diamond jewels, rakish air and "loose fish" manner bespoke the flush book-maker or the flashy "boss."
"Sancho Panza leads on Panchito!" the book-maker, Joe, declared as the field swept past the grand-stand. He was following the flying horses through his racing glasses. "Quarter horse," he informed his companion. "Beat the gate like a shot out of a gun. King Agrippa, the favorite, second by two lengths. Sir Galahad third. At the quarter! Panchito leads by half a length, Sir Galahad second.
It may have been the blunder of some editor, or the interpolation of some book-maker, eager, as in the case of Trivigiani with the manuscripts of Peter Martyr, to gather together disjointed materials, and fabricate a work to gratify the prevalent passion of the day.
Almost immediately after Trollope's death appeared an Autobiography in which, with praiseworthy but rather indiscreet frankness, he detailed habits of work of a mechanical kind, the confession of which played into the hands of those who had already begun to depreciate him as a mere book-maker.
The third occupant of the room was an ex- lightweight champion of the ring, Young Sullivan, by name. His trim waist and powerful shoulders betokened his trade. His jaw was firm, and a cauliflower ear overhung his collar like a fungus. Jim drew up a chair and chatted idly until the book-maker yawned, rose, and went out. Then Jim and the others relaxed.
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