The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

Peace did not come back to her work at the publishers' for several / weeks. The arrears began to accumulate, and Mr. Brandreth asked Ray to / help look after it; Ray was now so often with him that their friendly / acquaintance had become a confidential intimacy.

Men's advance in these relations is rapid, even in later life; in youth / it is by bounds. Before a week of their daily contact was out, Ray knew / that Mrs. Chapley, though the best soul in the world, and the most / devoted of mothers and grandmothers, had, in Mr. Brandreth's opinion, a / bad influence on his wife, and through her on his son. She excited Mrs. / Brandreth by the long visits she paid her; and she had given the baby / medicine on one occasion at least that distinctly had not agreed with / it. "That boy has taken so much belladonna, as a preventive of scarlet / fever, that I believe it's beginning to affect his eyes. The pupils are / tremendously enlarged, and he doesn't notice half as much as he did a / month ago. I don't know when Mrs. Chapley will let us have Miss Hughes / back again. Of course, I believe in taking precautions too, and I never / could forgive myself if anything really happened. But I don't want to be / a perfect slave to my fears, or my mother-in-law's, either -- should / you?"

He asked Ray whether, under the circumstances, he did not think he ought / to get some little place near New York for the summer, rather than go to / his country home in Massachusetts, where the Chapleys had a house, and / where his own mother lived the year round. When Ray shrank from the / question as too personal for him to deal with, Mr. Brandreth invited him / to consider the more abstract proposition that if the two grandmothers / had the baby there to quarrel over all summer, they would leave nothing / of the baby, and yet would not part friends.

"I'll tell you another reason why I want to be near my business so as to / keep my finger on it all the time, this year," said Mr. Brandreth, and / he went into a long and very frank study of the firm's affairs with Ray, / who listened with the discreet intelligence which made everybody trust / him. "With Mr. Chapley in the state he's got into about business, when / he doesn't care two cents whether school keeps or not, I see that I've / got to take the reins more and more into my own hands. " Mr. Brandreth / branched off into an examination of his own character, and indirectly / paid himself some handsome tributes as a business man. "I don't mean to / say," he concluded, "that I've got the experience of some of the older / men, but I do mean to say that experience doesn't count for half of what / they claim, in the book business, and I can prove it out of their own / mouths. They all admit that nobody can forecast the fate of a book. Of / course if you've got a book by a known author, you've got something to / count on, but not so much as people think, and some unknown man may / happen along with a thing that hits the popular mood and outsell him ten / times over. It's a perfect lottery."

"I wonder they let you send your lists of new publications through the / mails," said Ray, dryly.

"Oh, it isn't quite as bad as that," said Mr. Brandreth. "Though there / are a good many blanks too. I suppose the moral difference between / business and gambling is that in business you do work for a living, and / you don't propose to give nothing for something, even when you're buying / as cheap as you can to sell as dear as you can. With a book it's even / better. It's something you've put value into, and you have a right to / expect to get value out of it. That's what I tell Mr. Chapley when he / gets into one of his Tolstoï moods, and wants to give his money to the / poor and eat his bread in the sweat of his brow."

The two young men laughed at these grotesque conceptions of duty, and / Mr. Brandreth went on:

"Yes, sir, if I could get hold of a good, strong, lively novel" --

"Well, there is always _A Modern Romeo_," Ray suggested.

Mr. Brandreth winced. "I know. " He added, with the effect of hurrying to / get away from the subject, "I've had it over and over again with Mr. / Chapley till I'm tired of it. Well, I suppose it's his age, somewhat, / too. Every man, when he gets to Mr. Chapley's time of life, wants to go / into the country and live on the land. I'd like to see him living on the / land in Hatboro', Massachusetts! You can stand up in your buggy and / count half-a-dozen abandoned farms wherever you've a mind to stop on the / road. By-the-way," said Mr. Brandreth, from an association of ideas that / Ray easily followed, "have you seen anything of the book that Mr. Hughes / is writing? He's got a good title for it. ‘The World Revisited' ought to / sell the first edition of it at a go."

"Before people found out what strong meat it was? It condemns the whole / structure of society; he's read me parts of it."

"Well, well," said Mr. Brandreth, in a certain perplexity, "that might / make it go too. People like strong meat. They like to have the structure / of society condemned. There's a good deal of sympathy with the / underpinning; there's no use trying to deny it. Confound it! I should / like to try such a book as that in the market. But it would be regarded / by everybody who knew him as an outcome of Mr. Chapley's Tolstoï twist."

"I understand that Mr. Hughes's views are entirely opposed to Tolstoï's. / He regards him as unpractical," said Ray, with a smile for Hughes's / practicality.

"It wouldn't make any difference. They would call it Tolstoïan on Mr. / Chapley's account. People don't know. There was _Looking Backward_; they / took that at a gulp, and didn't know that it was the rankest sort of / socialism. My! If I could get hold of a book like _Looking Backward_!"

"I might have it come out that the wicked cousin in _A Modern Romeo_ was / a secret Anarchist. That ought to make the book's fortune."