"A week ago, last Tuesday, I sent you a letter from Paris, to which I
have received no answer. To guard against any misunderstanding arising
from a lost letter, will you be so good as to inform me by the bearer
whether you have received such a letter from me, and if so, whether you
have replied to it."
They evidently thought the enemy was preparing to move immediately upon
their works, and they replied at once,--
"We duly received your communication alluded to in your note of this
morning.
"Owing to the absence of one of the members of our firm and the great
pressure of business incident to the season of the year, we have not
had an opportunity since its receipt to give the question at issue the
attention it deserves. In a very few days you shall hear from us."
On the sixteenth of December, appeared another of those paragraphs in
the "Athenian Gazette," to which I have previously referred. Hitherto
the dove had only gyrated around the whole heavens, spreading its white
wings of praise over publishers in general, but now, loving, like
Death, a shining mark, it circled down and settled squarely upon the
modest brows of Messrs. Brummell & Hunt, in the following style:--
"MESSRS. B. & H.'S ANNOUNCEMENTS.--The attractive advertisement of
Messrs. B. & H., which appears in our columns to-day, is interesting
to those who watch the progress of events, as an indication not only
of the success which this publishing house has achieved, but as an
evidence of the literary supremacy of the 'hub.' Years ago, when
Sophocles, after enjoying the entree into the leading social circles
of the city, styled Athens 'The Modern Eden,' our neighbors of the
other cities quoted the remark in derision. But time has proved that
the title was not merely complimentary. A glance at the list of authors
whose works are published by Messrs. B. & H., will at once surprise
those unacquainted with the large number of the _Adriatic_ coterie who
have residence within the shadow of the Acropolis. The Athenian authors
who have their established headquarters with this publishing house are
more widely known and more thoroughly read than any equal number who
have acquired literary distinction, while the number of Roman authors
who are represented in this country by Messrs. B. & H. include the Poet
Laureate of Italy and the great master of fiction, Josephus.
"While we may congratulate the firm upon the success they have
achieved in producing the most exquisite illustrated gift books of the
season, and compliment them upon the typographical execution of all
their publications, we think still higher praise is due to this house
for their encouragement of Athenian talent, and their rare tact in
introducing many who have become popular mainly by the discriminating
manner in which they have been ushered into the presence of the reading
public. Whatever share of prosperity this publishing house has reached,
there are none to attribute it to any narrow or selfish policy. They
have dealt with authors of all lands upon the broad ground of mutual
benefit, and have never sought to make bread out of other people's
brainwork and leave the worker without fair compensation. It is a
credit to Athens that such an establishment has grown up and flourished
in our city."
Which reminds me of a rural schoolmaster who taught the village school
for several winters in succession, and whose specialty was writing.
Years after, if the handwriting of any of his pupils was spoken of, the
honest man would reply innocently, "Yes, he is a very fine writer, very
superior. His writing is precisely like mine!"
Messrs. Brummel & Hunt's authors are the most widely known and the most
thoroughly read in the country.
And we who belong to that Happy Family feel that the lines have
fallen to us in pleasant places, and try to look unconscious of our
preëminence, while we cannot wholly repress a glow of gratification.
But what is this? We, or rather you,--for just here I find it agreeable
to follow the admonition of Mr. Guppy's mother, and "get out" of the
company--_you_ have become popular mainly by the discriminating manner
in which you have been ushered into the presence of the reading public!
O, what a fall is here, my countrymen! Imagine the emotions of the
belle on being told that the attention and admiration which she fondly
supposed had been excited by her wit and beauty, were mainly owing
to the discriminating manner in which she had been ushered into the
ball-room!
Some little margin is left for grace of form, loveliness of feature,
elegance of dress, but mainly it is the white-gloved usher to whom her
success is due!
There are never wanting persons who, not content with writing history
as it is, are always conjuring up what would have been if things had
happened differently. If Charles I. had not lost his head, if Napoleon
had beaten at Waterloo, if Booth's pistol had missed fire, events would
have gone thus and thus. A fruitful field opens before such speculators
in the history of our country's literature. Had Messrs. Brummell & Hunt
gone into the grocery business, for instance, Homer would have been
cobbling shoes in Haverhill, or at most, chronicling small beer in a
country newspaper. Dante would have been a lawyer in chambers, drawing
up wills and plodding through deeds, but leaving no foot-prints on the
sands of time. Boccaccio would have been milking cows at Brook Farm, or
growing round shouldered over his desk in the Jerusalem Court House.
Miriam would have been writing children's stories for the "Little
Cormorant," at fifty cents a column, and as Uncle Tom's Cabin would
never have been built, the South would never have been provoked into
rebellion; we should have had no war and no greenbacks, prices would
never have risen, ten per cent. and fifteen cents would have been the
same, and we should all have died comfortably in our beds.
But it is a theme for lasting gratitude not only that this house did
not go into the "cotton trade and sugar line," but also that whatever
share of prosperity it has reached, there are none to attribute it
to any narrow or selfish policy. It has never sought to make bread
out of other people's brain-work and leave the worker without fair
compensation. But upon what meat hath this our "Athens Gazette" fed,
that it is able to make so sweeping a negative, asks the unsanctified
heart. By what authority saith it these things, and who gave it this
authority? Has it had personal interviews with all the persons who
ever had or sought business connections with Messrs. Brummel & Hunt,
and learned from them that no narrow or selfish policy has ever been
attributed to them? Even this would not establish its assertion, but
surely nothing less than this would. It does not say that no narrow
or selfish policy was ever indulged in, but that nobody so much as
attributed it to them. Cæsar's wife is above suspicion. But has any one
asked Cæsar?
It is not, of course, to be for a moment supposed that so great a house
as the one in question would ever stoop to manufacture its own "puffs,"
if I may be pardoned the term. Such a course might befit the "parvenu
hawkers and peddlers" of books, but not an hereditary aristocracy
like this. Its "Poet-Publisher" has indeed distinguished himself by
other figures than those of the day-book and ledger, but I have never
heard that any member of the firm has been ambitious of a place among
the prose writers of Greece. Nor is it I suspect any the more to be
presumed because these paragraphs came to me conspicuously marked with
blue and red lines, and superscribed in the handwriting with which many
years of correspondence with the firm of B. & H. had made me familiar.
For do we not all, as soon as we see ourselves complimented in the
newspaper, send it around to all our friends by the early mail? But
I am reminded of a story which I learned and recited many times in
school. While the regicides Goffe, Whalley, and Maxwell were hiding in
Connecticut, a rough fellow came from afar and terrified the simple
villagers by challenging them to mortal combat. As they stood pale
with consternation, a venerable man, unknown to all, appeared, gravely
accepted the challenge, and immediately disappeared. At the appointed
time throngs were gathered to witness the conflict. As the clock struck
the hour, the mysterious combatant threaded the crowd and took his
place in the arena armed only with a broom, and armored with a huge
cheese fastened upon his person as a breastplate. The astonished bully
began the fight by plunging his sword into the breast, or rather the
cheese, of his opponent. The latter responded by dipping his broom into
the neighboring mud-puddle and giving the bully a gentle swash about
the neck. A second lunge into the cheese and the broom went higher,
sweeping the fighter's chin. A third, and with a fresh baptism of
mud the broom was drawn tenderly over the whole face of the baffled
ruffian, who, unused to such warfare, threw down his sword in terror,
crying, "Who are you? You must be either Goffe, Whalley, or the Devil!"
Moral: So I, viewing this paragraph and sundry others that follow it,
and seeing how finely they are timed to the issues of the contest,
cannot avoid the mental soliloquy, "Brummell & Hunt, or--Planchette!"