"There is no reason why you should hurry about your B. & H. matter.
They have not been in great haste even to answer your letters.
Wherefore, although I shall be glad to see you very soon, you may take
your own time, and by thinking, perhaps, add a cubit to your mental
stature.
"I am not quite sure you can be excused from being present. You can,
however, fortify or fiftify yourself with Fritz or Fred.
"Now write down your claims against B. & H. like a lawyer."
About this time, the Athenian press seemed to have been seized with an
unwonted interest in the book trade, and began to break out in sapient
and significant little paragraphs like the following, which I copy from
the "Athenian Tribune," of September 30, 1768:--
"BOOK PUBLISHING.--There is no class of business so liable to
misconstruction and misunderstanding, as that of a publisher of books.
It is difficult for an author to understand the business aspects of
publishing a book. In the first place, the expenses of composition,
correcting, stereotyping, paper, printing and binding, are very large,
compared sometimes to the size of the book. Then the advertising bills,
and two or three hundred gratuitous copies for notice and review, must
be added to the cost of publication. Then, of course, store rent, clerk
hire, and packing expenses, including paper, twine and boxes, should
be reckoned as part of the cost of getting up an edition of a book;
so that, in most instances, the sale of two or three thousand of a
new work hardly pays the publisher for the labor and capital included
in the outlay. Now all this the author, unless he or she happen to
understand the business thoroughly, rarely comprehends. The elder John
Murray, one of the most honorable and generous of publishers, used to
say, that an author who thoroughly understood all the intricacies and
expenses of issuing a book from the press, and properly launching it
into the hands of the public, was as rare a prize to find as a phœnix
or a unicorn."
Yes.
When I came to reflect upon the matter, the proposal of B. & H. did
not seem so much like my own as it at first appeared. Partly, perhaps,
I feared the Greeks even bearing gifts. And if the two plans were in
substance the same, why did they suggest one so soon after rejecting
the other? If they were not the same, the difference would not be
likely to be in my favor. The superficial thinker might suggest that
the person to judge whether formal arbitration would be satisfactory
to me was myself. As I had proposed it, the information from Messrs.
B. & H. that it would not be satisfactory to _me_, seemed to be
premature, not to say supererogatory. But they not only set aside
formal arbitration and brought up a "confidential friendly" plan--not
with a suggestion that it might, but with the succinct assertion that
it would answer the same end in a much better way; they also chose the
confidential friend themselves; and this friend was a gentleman with
whom I had no acquaintance, whom I had never so much as seen, and of
whom my personal knowledge was confined to the interchange of some
half dozen letters. Now a man may have a very high reputation, and be
a very superior person, yet when you want a confidential friend, you
would hardly take him, unless you had, at least, a passing acquaintance
with him. Perhaps Messrs. B. & H.'s endorsement of any one as a
"just man," ought to be enough; though, under the circumstances, it
reminds one of the convicts in the Maine state prison, who drew up
resolutions against capital punishment,--but regarding the confidential
friendly way of doing business, I had become thoroughly disenchanted.
It was confidential friendliness that made the trouble, and I was
not homeopathically inclined. I languished for a little distrustful
business accuracy, and cried, "Save me from my friends," or rather from
Messrs. B. & H.'s friends.
What philosopher was it who maintained that life and death are the
same? "Why do you not then kill yourself?" asked a skeptic. "Because
they are the same."
If it was of no importance to Messrs. B. & H. whether we had one man or
two, I would have two, since it was of no importance.
If it was important to them that we should not have two, then I would
have two, because it was important.