title, too. We would publish the book anonymously, and let it be known
that the only clue to the writer was the crimson cord with which the
manuscript was tied when we received it. It would be a first-class
advertisement.

Perkins, however, was not much interested in the story, and he left me
to settle the details. I wrote to the author asking him to call, and he
turned out to be a young woman.

Our interview was rather shy. I was a little doubtful about the proper
way to talk to a real author, being purely a Chicagoan myself, and I had
an idea that while my usual vocabulary was good enough for business
purposes it might be too easy-going to impress a literary person
properly, and in trying to talk up to her standard I had to be very
careful in my choice of words. No publisher likes to have his authors
think he is weak in the grammar line.

Miss Rosa Belle Vincent, however, was quite as flustered as I was. She
seemed ill-at-ease and anxious to get away, which I supposed was because
she had not often conversed with publishers who paid a thousand dollars
cash in advance for a manuscript.

She was not at all what I had thought an author would look like. She
didn't even wear glasses. If I had met her on the street I should have
said: "There goes a pretty flip stenographer." She was that kind--big
picture hat and high pompadour.

I was afraid she would try to run the talk into literary lines and Ibsen
and Gorky, where I would have been swamped in a minute, but she didn't,
and, although I had wondered how to break the subject of money when