phrase, was it not, Jack?"

Jack was too full to speak.

"Provided I would introduce a proper love-plot, and make it into three
volumes post octavo, twenty-three lines in a page, neither more nor
less. One honest fellow at last was found who seemed to me a very
respectable and indeed enterprising person. And after going through a
list of calculations, which showed that no possible profit could arise,
he generously offered to give me half of those no-profits, provided I
would guarantee half the very visible expenses. I was just meditating
the prudence of accepting this proposal, when your uncle was seized with
a sublime idea, which has whisked up my book in a whirlwind of
expectation."

"And that idea?" said I, despondently.

"That idea," quoth Uncle Jack, recovering himself, "is simply and
shortly this. From time immemorial, authors have been the prey of the
publishers. Sir, authors have lived in garrets, nay, have been choked
in the street by an unexpected crumb of bread, like the man who wrote
the play, poor fellow!"

"Otway," said my father. "The story is not true,--no matter."

"Milton, sir, as everybody knows, sold 'Paradise Lost' for ten pounds,--
ten pounds, Sir! In short, instances of a like nature are too numerous
to quote.--But the booksellers, sir, they are leviathans; they roll in
seas of gold; they subsist upon authors as vampires upon little
children. But at last endurance has reached its limit; the fiat has