From the chapter entitled "My Milkman," in Cooper's volume of
"Contemporary Portraits," hitherto unpublished, through no fault of his
own, but because one publisher declined to handle anything but
typewritten copy, and another suggested that if cut down by half the
book might be accepted by the editor of some religious publication, and
still another editor thought that if several chapters were expanded and
a love story inserted, the thing might do, otherwise there was no market
for essays, especially such as failed to take a cheerful view of life,
whereupon Cooper insisted that his book was exceptionally cheerful,
inasmuch as it showed that life could be tolerable in spite of being so
queer, to which the editor replied that serializing a book of humour was
quite out of the question. "Then how about Pickwick?" said Cooper--but
let us get back to the chapter on the milkman. I quote:
Would sleep never come! I shifted the pillow to the foot of the bed and
back; threw off the covers; pulled them over my head; discarded them;
repeated the multiplication table; counted footsteps in the street
beneath my window; lit a cigarette; tried to go to sleep sitting up and
embracing my knees the way they bury the dead in Yucatan. No use. I
would doze off, and immediately that unfortunate column of figures would
appear, demanding to be added up, and I unable to determine whether sums
written in Roman numerals could be added up at all. That is the
disadvantage of taking conversation seriously, after ten in the evening,
or at any time. I had been discussing the immigration problem till
nearly midnight, and now I was busy adding up the annual influx from
Austria-Hungary during the last twelve years expressed in Roman
numerals. Some people are different. Their opinions don't hurt them. I
have heard people say the most biting things about the need of
abolishing religion and the family, and five minutes later ask for a
caviare sandwich. Whereas I take the total immigration from
Austria-Hungary for the last twelve years to bed with me and cannot fall
asleep.
I heard the rattle of wheels under my window. It was nearing daybreak. I
looked at my watch and it was close to five. I got up, washed in cold
water, dressed, and went outside. As I walked downstairs I heard the
clatter of bottles in the hallway below and some one whistling
cheerfully. It was the milkman. His wagon was at the curb, and as I
passed down the front steps and stopped to breathe in the sharp, clean,
mystic air of dawn, the milkman's horse raised his head, gazed at me for
a moment with a curious, friendly scepticism, and sank back into
thoughtful contemplation of a spot eighteen inches immediately in front
of his fore-legs.
(Here one editor had written in the margin: "Amateurish beginning;
should have led off with a crisp phrase or two addressed to the milkman
and then proceeded to a psychological analysis of the milkman's horse.")