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He dabbled in poetry, wrote book-reviews, collected rare editions, attended first nights, spoke mysteriously of "stuff" he was working on; and sometimes confidentially told his lady friends of his intention to bring it out when he had gotten it into shape, asking their advice as to bindings, etc. Men of this type rarely bring out their stuff, for the reason that they never get it into shape.
She rushed to him, patted his fur coat, the long hairs smooth but chilly to her fingers. She joyously summoned Bea, "All right! He's here! We'll sit right down!" There were, to inform the doctor's wife of his successes no clapping audiences nor book-reviews nor honorary degrees.
He wrote more book-reviews, and peddled them about; sometimes he was forced to exchange them for books he reviewed, and then to sell the books for twenty or thirty cents apiece. He wrote up some ideas for political cartoons, and got three dollars for one of them. He wrote a parody upon a popular poem, and got six dollars for that.
"And that woman," exclaimed Aunt Martha, when she was under full sail, "that woman, because she has two bookcases in the front room and reads the book-reviews in the Delineator, thinks that she is cultured. When her folks first came to town they were as poor as Job's turkey, which was not to their discredit everyone was poor in those days.
"I always rule hard against the lawyer who quotes Latin," said a Brooklyn judge to me the other day. Happily, Law Latin is now not used to any extent, except in Missouri. No more clients came to John Fiske than did to Wendell Phillips, who once had a law-office on the same street. So John sent letters to the newspapers, wrote book-reviews, and contributed essays to the "Atlantic Monthly."
Thyrsis, from much work and little sleep, was haggard and wild of aspect; the cry of the world, "Take a position!" rang in his ears day and night. The springs of book-reviews had dried up entirely, and by sheer starvation he was forced to a stage lower yet. A former college friend was editing a work of "contemporary biography", and offered Thyrsis some hack-writing.
A clipping-bureau had written, offering to furnish them at five cents apiece; and this was moderate, considering that there were only a dozen altogether. Most of these were from unimportant out-of-town papers, whose book-reviews are written by the high-school nieces and the elderly maiden-aunts of the publishers.
I'd like to see all the shoemakers get together and refuse to make any more shoes till people promised to write reviews about them, like all these book-reviews. Then just as soon as people's shoes began to wear out they'd come right around, and you'd read about the new masterpieces of Mr. Regal and Mr. Walkover and Mr. Stetson." "Yes! I can imagine it.
I said, 'Can't you see that this book is original that it's come out of a man's heart? 'Yes, he said, 'perhaps. But you can't expect the public to see it. And so there you are!" Thyrsis sat with his nails dug into his palms. "It's just like the book-reviews!" he cried. "He knows better, but that doesn't count he's thinking about the public!
Such a cordial and spontaneous outgoing towards him on our part would surprise as much as it would delight him. His life was private in the strongest sense of the term. His contributions to literature were all anonymous, book-reviews chiefly, or letters and paragraphs in the New York Nation on musical or literary topics.
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