The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

In this time of suspense Ray kept away from old Kane, whose peculiar / touch he could not bear. But he knew perfectly well what his own / feelings were, and he did not care to have them analyzed. He could not / help sending Kane the book, and for a while he dreaded his / acknowledgments; then he resented his failure to make any.

In the frequent visits he paid to his publisher, he fancied that his / welcome from Mr. Brandreth was growing cooler, and he did not go so / often. He kept doggedly at his work in the _Every Evening_ office; but / here the absolute silence of his chief concerning his book was as hard / to bear as Mr. Brandreth's fancied coolness; he could not make out / whether it meant compassion or dissatisfaction, or how it was to effect / his relation to the paper. The worst of it was that his adversity, or / his delayed prosperity, which ever it was, began to corrupt him. In his / self-pity he wrote so leniently of some rather worthless books that he / had no defence to make when his chief called his attention to the wide / divergence between his opinions and those of some other critics. At / times when he resented the hardship of his fate he scored the books / before him with a severity that was as unjust as the weak commiseration / in his praises. He felt sure that if the situation prolonged itself his / failure as an author must involve his failure as a critic.

It was not only the coolness in Mr. Brandreth's welcome which kept him / aloof; he had a sense of responsibility, which was almost a sense of / guilt, in the publisher's presence, for he was the author of a book / which had been published contrary to the counsel of all his literary / advisers. It was true that he had not finally asked Mr. Brandreth to / publish it, but he had been eagerly ready to have him do it; he had kept / his absurd faith in it, and his steadfastness must have imparted a / favorable conviction to Mr. Brandreth; he knew that there had certainly / been ever so much personal kindness for him mixed up with its / acceptance. The publisher, however civil outwardly -- and Mr. Brandreth, / with all his foibles, was never less than a gentleman -- must inwardly / blame him for his unlucky venture. The thought of this became / intolerable, and at the end of a Saturday morning, when the book was / three or four weeks old, he dropped in at Chapley's to have it out with / Mr. Brandreth. The work on the Saturday edition of the paper was always / very heavy, and Ray's nerves were fretted from the anxieties of getting / it together, as well as from the intense labor of writing. He was going / to humble himself to the publisher, and declare their failure to be all / his own fault; but he had in reserve the potentiality of a bitter / quarrel with him if he did not take it in the right way.

He pushed on to Mr. Brandreth's room, tense with his purpose, and stood / scowling and silent when he found Kane there with him. Perhaps the old / fellow divined the danger in Ray's mood; perhaps he pitied him; perhaps / he was really interested in the thing which he was talking of with the / publisher, and which he referred to Ray without any preliminary ironies.

"It's about the career of a book; how it begins to go, and why, and / when."

"Apropos of _A Modern Romeo_? " Ray asked, harshly.

"If you please, _A Modern Romeo_. " Ray took the chair which Mr. / Brandreth signed a clerk to bring him from without. Kane went on: "It's / very curious, the history of these things, and I've looked into it / somewhat. Ordinarily a book makes its fortune, or it doesn't, at once. I / should say this was always the case with a story that had already been / published serially; but with a book that first appears as a book, the / chances seem to be rather more capricious. The first great success with / us was _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and that was assured before the story was / finished in the old _National Era_, where it was printed. But that had / an immense motive power behind it -- a vital question that affected the / whole nation."

"I seem to have come too late for the vital questions," said Ray.

"Oh no! oh no! There are always plenty of them left. There is the / industrial slavery, which exists on a much more universal scale than the / chattel slavery; that is still waiting its novelist."

"Or its Trust of novelists," Ray scornfully suggested.

"Very good; very excellent good; nothing less than a syndicate perhaps / could grapple with a theme of such vast dimensions."

"It would antagonize a large part of the reading public," Mr. Brandreth / said; but he had the air of making a mental memorandum to keep an eye / out for MSS. dealing with industrial slavery.

"So much the better! So much the better! " said Kane. "_Robert Elsmere_ / antagonized much more than half its readers by its religious positions. / But that wasn't what I was trying to get at. I was thinking about how / some of the phenomenally successful books hung fire at first."

"Ah, that interests me as the author of a phenomenally successful book / that is still hanging fire," sighed Ray.

Kane smiled approval of his attempt to play with his pain, and went on: / "You know that _Gates Ajar_, which sold up into the hundred thousands, / was three months selling the first fifteen hundred."

"Is that so? " Ray asked. "_A Modern Romeo_ has been three weeks selling / the first fifteen. " He laughed, and Mr. Brandreth with him; but the fact / encouraged him, and he could see that it encouraged the publisher.

"We won't speak of _Mr. Barnes of New York_" --

"Oh no! Don't! " cried Ray.

"You might be very glad to have written it on some accounts, my dear / boy," said Kane.

"Have you read it?"