Chapter LVII: Section 6: This was also the month in which the fate of the book was

decided. Each day, as he went for the mail, Thyrsis’ heart would beat high with expectation; and each day he would be chilled with bitter disappointment. He was still hoping for a real review, or for some signs of the book’s “catching on”. Nor did he finally give up until he chanced to have a talk about it with his friend, Mr. Ardsley; who explained to him that here, too, he had fallen into a trap.

His “publishers” were not really publishers at all. They did not make their profit by selling books--they made it out of authors. There were many vain and foolish people who wrote books which they were anxious to see in print, so that they might be known as literary lights among their friends. Many of them had money, and would buy a number of copies; and the “publishers” had the expenses guaranteed in advance and so would make a profit upon the sale of even one or two hundred copies. All this being well known, the reviews never paid any attention to the announcements of this concern, nor did “the trade” handle their books. As for Thyrsis’ volume, they had printed it very cheaply--it was to be doubted if it had cost them what he had paid them. And they had even published it as a “net price” book--thereby taking three cents more off the royalty to which he was entitled!

Mr. Ardsley had declared that he would be lucky if his book sold three hundred copies; and so he felt that it was quite a tribute to the merits of his work when, after six months more of waiting, he received a royalty statement from the concern showing a sale of seven hundred and forty-three copies, and enclosing a check for eight-nine dollars and sixteen cents. This check Thyrsis paid over to his rich relative, and a week or two later, when he sold a short story, he sent the balance of the hundred dollars that he owed. And so he figured that the privilege of writing his first book and offering it to the hundred great men of letters of the country, had cost him the sum of one hundred and thirty-five dollars and eighty-four cents!

Meantime, of course, Thyrsis was hearing from these great men of letters. When he counted up at the end he found that he had received replies from sixteen of them; whether the other eighty-four received his book, or what they did with it, he never knew. Of these sixteen, six wrote formal acknowledgements, and two others said that they found nothing to appeal to them in his book; so there were left eight who gave him comfort, Several of these were among the really vital men of the time, as Thyrsis found out later, when he came to read their books, and to know them as something other than newspaper names. Several of them wrote him long and really helpful criticisms of his work, recognizing the merits he knew it had, and pointing out defects which he was quick to acknowledge. Four of them even told him that he had undoubted genius, and predicted great things for him. But that was as far as any of them went. They wrote their opinions, and there they stopped, as if at a blank wall. No one among them seemed to feel that he could take any action upon his opinion, however favorable; not one comprehended that what the boy was groping for was neither praise nor blame, but a chance for life. Not one had any advice of a practical sort to offer; not one had any personal or human thing to say; not one even asked to see him! And lest this should be due to oversight, or to false delicacy, Thyrsis wrote, in his desperation, and reminded them that the “genius” they recognized was being killed by starvation. To this, one did not reply, and another advised him to take up newspaper work, as “a means of getting in touch with the public”!

It was a ghastly thing to the boy as he came to realize it--this utter deadness and coldness of “the world”. Thyrsis himself was all afire with love--with love, not only for his vision and his art, but for all humanity, and for humanity’s noblest dreams. His friends were poets and sages of past time, men of generous faith and quick sympathies; and in all the world of the living, was there not one such man to be found? Was there nothing left upon earth but critical discernment and epistolary politeness?

The question pursued him still more, after the one interview which resulted from all this correspondence. There was a distinguished Harvard professor who had told him that he had rare powers and must go on; and hearing that the professor was in New York, Thyrsis asked the privilege of calling.

It was in one of the city’s most expensive hotels--for the professor had married a rich wife, and was what people called “socially prominent”. The other did not know this; but it seemed an awful thing to him that anyone should be sitting in a brocaded silk-covered chair in a palace of luxury like this, while possessed of the knowledge that his genius was starving.

“You tell me to go on, professor,” he said. “But how _can_ I go on?”

The professor was fingering his gold eyeglasses and studying his visitor.

“You must get some kind of routine work,” he declared--“enough to support you. You can’t expect to live by your writing.”

“But if I do that, I can’t write!” cried Thyrsis.

“You’ll have to do the best you can,” said the other.

“But I can’t do _anything!_ The emotions of it eat me all up. I daren’t even let myself think about my work when I have to do other things.”

“I should think,” commented the professor, “that you would find you are still more hindered by the uncertainties of hack-work.”

“I do find that,” the boy replied. “That is just what is the matter with me.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be forced to a compromise in the end.”

“But I won’t! I won’t!” cried Thyrsis, wildly. “I will starve first!”

The other said nothing.

“Or I will beg!” added Thyrsis.

The other’s look clouded slightly--as the boy, with his quick sensitiveness, noted instantly. “Of course,” said the professor, “if you are not ashamed to do that--”

“But why should I be ashamed? Greater men than I have begged for their art.”

“Yes. I know that. And naturally--I honor that feeling in you. If you have that much fervor--why, of course, you will do it. But I’m afraid you’ll find it a humiliating experience.”

“I wouldn’t expect to find it a picnic,” answered Thyrsis, and took his departure--having perceived that the professor’s leading thought was a fear lest he should begin his begging that day.

So there it was! There was the eminent critic, the writer of exquisite appreciations of literature! The darling of the salons of Boston--which called itself the Athens of America and the hub of the universe! A man with a brain full of all the culture of the ages--and with the heart of a mummy and the soul of a snob! He had approved of Thyrsis’ consecration with his lips--because he did not dare to disapprove it, because the ghosts of a thousand paupers of genius had stood over him and awed him into silence. But in his secret heart he had despised this wan and haggard boy who threatened to beg; and the boy went out of the palace of luxury, feeling like an outcast rat.