The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

Ray woke from his rapid mental formulation of this comforting / reassurance to find the old man saying to him, "What is the nature of / the work that Chapley has published for you? I hope something by which / you intend to advance others, as well as yourself: something that is to / be not merely the means of your personal aggrandizement in fame and / fortune. Nothing, in my getting back to the world, strikes me as more / shamelessly selfish than the ordinary literary career. I don't wonder / the art has sunk so low; its aims are on the business level."

Mr. Kane listened with an air of being greatly amused, and even / gratified, and Ray thought he had purposely let the old man go on as if / he were an author who had already broken the shell. Before he could / think of some answer that should at once explain and justify him, Kane / interposed:

"I hope Mr. Ray is no better than the rest of us; but he may be; you / must make your arraignment and condemnation conditional, at any rate. / He's an author _in petto_, as yet; Chapley may never publish him."

"Then why," said the old man, irascibly, "did you speak of him as you / did to Chapley? It was misleading."

"In the world you've come back to, my dear friend," said Kane, "you'll / find that we have no time to refine upon the facts. We can only sketch / the situation in large, bold outlines. Perhaps I wished to give Mr. Ray / a hold upon Chapley by my premature recognition of him as an author, and / make the wicked publisher feel that there was already a wide general / impatience to see Mr. Ray's book."

"That would have been very corrupt, Kane," said the other. "But I owe / Mr. Ray an apology."

Ray found his tongue. "Perhaps you won't think so when you see my / novel."

"A novel! Oh, I have no time to read novels! " the old man burst out. "A / practical man" --

"Nor volumes of essays," said Kane, picking up a book from the table at / his elbow. "Really, as a measure of self-defence, I must have the leaves / of my presentation copies cut, at any rate. I must sacrifice my taste to / my vanity. Then I sha'n't know when the grateful recipients haven't / opened them."

"I've no time to read books of any kind" -- the old man began again.

"You ought to set up reviewer," Kane interposed again.

"Oh, I've looked into your essays, Kane, here and there. The literature / is of a piece with the affectation of the uncut edges: something utterly / outdated and superseded. It's all as impertinent as the demand you make / that the reader should do the work of a bookbinder, and cut your / leaves."

"Do you know that I'm really hurt -- not for myself, but for you! -- by / what you say of my uncut edges? You descend to the level of a / Brandreth," said Kane.

"A Brandreth? What is a Brandreth?"

"It is a publisher: Chapley's son-in-law and partner."

"Oh, yes, yes," said Hughes.

"I spent many hours," said Kane, plaintively, "pleading with him for an / edition with uncut edges. He contended that the public would not buy it / if the edges were not cut; and I told him that I wished to have that / fact to fall back upon, in case they didn't buy it for some other / reason. And I was right. The edition hasn't sold, and the uncut edges / have saved me great suffering until now. Why not have confined your own / remarks, my dear friend, to the uncut edges? I might have agreed with / you."

"Because," said the old man, "I cannot have patience with a man of your / age who takes the mere dilettante view of life -- who regards the world as / something to be curiously inspected and neatly commented, instead of / toiled for, sweated for, suffered for!"

"It appears to me that there is toiling and sweating and suffering / enough for the world already," said Kane, with a perverse levity. "Look / at the poor millionnaires, struggling to keep their employés in work! If / you've come back to the world for no better purpose than to add to its / perseverance and perspiration, I could wish for your own sake that you / had remained in some of your communities -- or all of them, for that / matter."

The other turned half round in his chair, and looked hard into Kane's / smiling face. "You are a most unserious spirit, Kane, and you always / were! When will you begin to be different? Do you expect to continue a / mere frivolous maker of phrases to the last? Your whole book there is / just a bundle of phrases -- labels for things. Do you ever intend to _be_ / anything?"