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If the book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit: "Mary was herself not unlearned in the lore of pain" meaning by that that she had not always traveled on asphalt; or, as some authorities would frame it, that she had "been there herself," a form which, while preferable to the book's form, is still not to be recommended.
A book's title had lodged in his mind, remained there, and was now curiously stirring in some direct relation to his present perplexities. But it kept its face averted. He could not read it. Vaguely he identified the nameless book with Tessie Kearns; he could not divine how, because it was not her book and he had never seen it except on the library shelf.
"Don't I say that has nothing to do with it? If you wish to grip the reader's attention you must let yourself go, whether you're a gentleman or a lady. Of course," she relented, "your book's very idyllic, and delightful, and all that; but," she resumed, severely, "do you think an honest critic could say there was not a dull page in it from cover to cover?" The novelist sighed.
For one month now Amedee Violette's volume of verses, entitled Poems from Nature, had embellished with its pale-blue covers the shelves of the book-shops. The commotion raised by the book's success, and the favorable criticisms given by the journals, had not yet calmed down at the Cafe de Seville. This emotion, let it be understood, did not exist except among the literary men.
By April the book was published, and at the end of this month, laid aside by sickness of the vague kind called locally "a decline," she took to her bed, rising only to lay a few sticks upon the fire from her store gathered in the autumn, or to brew herself a cup of tea. She waited for the tokens of her book's conquests in the great world of thought and men.
And so it was that only when things had begun to resettle themselves was any fresh reference made to the book's forthcoming publication. As soon as the subject was broached Max presented a face of polite astonishment. "I thought you knew, sir," he said. "Knew what?" "The most important event in recent history; I even thought you might have instigated it."
"But apart from my amateur joining of the flats, you think the book's worthy of Adrian?" "Oh, I do," she cried passionately. "I do. It's a work of genius. It's Adrian in all his maturity, in all his greatness!" The door opened. "Dinner is served, madam," said Franklin. When, by way of comforting Jaffery, I criticised Doria's outburst, he fell upon me as though about to devour me alive.
Now, reading for pastime is immensely simplified when the book's theme is some familiar matter of the reader's workaday life, because at outset the reader is spared considerable mental effort. The motorist above referred to, and indeed any average-novel-reader, can without exertion conceive of the Williamsons' people in their automobiles.
I do not for a moment suppose the work will sell well during the civil war; but it is none the less important to occupy the shops with it, and then perhaps on the return of peace and the fine arts it will not be pirated away from us. I hope I have been sufficiently explicit to make you master of this book's destiny."
Pickwick and his friends arrived in the nick of time to prevent the ancient but still sentimental Rachael from becoming Mrs. Jingle? It is not difficult to understand why that particular instalment of "Pickwick" was the turning-point of the book's fortunes.
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