Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 21, 2025
The Professor sat silent: there was too cruel an irony in the coincidence. Harviss looked up at him in surprise. "Well, what's the matter with taking my advice you're not going out of literature, are you?" The Professor rose from his chair. "No I'm going into it," he said simply. "Going into it?" "I'm going to write a real book a serious one." "Good Lord!
But it was evident that the Professor had captured his public, for all the resources of the profession could not, as Harviss gleefully pointed out, have carried the book so straight to the heart of the nation. There was something noble in the way in which Harviss belittled his own share in the achievement, and insisted on the inutility of shoving a book which had started with such headway on.
My dear Linyard, why didn't you tell me?" His voice sank to a reproachful solemnity, and he pushed forward his own arm-chair. The Professor dropped into it with a chuckle. "And miss the joy of letting you find out?" "Well it was a joy." Harviss held out a box of his best cigars. "I don't know when I've had a bigger sensation.
He was aware that many of his most reckless comrades had been transformed into prudent capitalists or cowed wage-earners; but he was almost sure that he could count on Harviss. So rare a sense of irony, so keen a perception of relative values, could hardly have been blunted even by twenty years' intercourse with the obvious. The publisher's appearance was a little disconcerting.
"Oh, no, I was wide awake enough," said the Professor faintly. "Well, then, why are you staring at me as if I were not?" Harviss leaned forward to lay a reassuring hand on his visitor's worn coat-sleeve. "Don't mistake me, my dear Linyard. Don't fancy there was the least unkindness in my allusion to your change of front. What is growth but the shifting of the stand-point?
He dropped into his chair again, and grasped its arms to steady his shaking. "This is the best laugh I've had since college," he brought out between his paroxysms. And then, suddenly, he sat up with a groan. "But if it's as good as that it's a failure!" he exclaimed. Harviss, stiffening a little, examined the tip of his cigar.
"Not to me but it seems you've taken it so." "You never told me " began the publisher in a ruffled tone. "No, I never told you," said the Professor. Harviss sat staring at the manuscript between them. "I don't pretend to be up in such recondite forms of humour," he said, still stiffly. "Of course you address yourself to a very small class of readers."
But the publisher was an old friend; and when the card had finally drifted to his office on the languid tide of routine he came forth at once to greet his visitor. The warmth of his welcome convinced the Professor that he had been right in bringing his manuscript to Ned Harviss.
He might have published a treatise on the Filioque without disturbing the confidence of those on whose approval his reputation rested; and moreover he was sustained by the thought that one glance at his book would let them into its secret. In fact, so sure was he of this that he wondered the astute Harviss had cared to risk such speedy exposure.
The words smote the Professor with mingled pain and ecstasy: he could have wept over their significance. But his friend's other phrase reminded him with a start of Harviss. "You have got hold of a big thing " it had been the publisher's first comment on "The Vital Thing." But what a world of meaning lay between the two phrases!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking