he young poet began, interrupting him.

"Let me look at your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Popkins," said the
publisher, interrupting in his turn.

"Hopkins, if you please, sir," Gifted suggested mildly, proceeding to
extract the manuscript, which had got wedged into his pocket, and seemed
to be holding on with all its might. He was wondering all the time over
the extraordinary clairvoyance of the publisher, who had looked through
so many thick folds, broadcloth, lining, brown paper, and seen his poems
lying hidden in his breast-pocket. The idea that a young person coming
on such an errand should have to explain his intentions would have
seemed very odd to the publisher. He knew the look which belongs to this
class of enthusiasts just as a horse-dealer knows the look of a green
purchaser with the equine fever raging in his veins. If a young author
had come to him with a scrap of manuscript hidden in his boots, like
Major Andre's papers, the publisher would have taken one glance at him
and said, "Out with it!"

While he was battling for the refractory scroll with his pocket, which
turned half wrong side out, and acted as things always do when people
are nervous and in a hurry, the publisher directed his conversation
again to Master Byles Gridley.

"A remarkable book, that of yours, Mr. Gridley,--would have a great run
if it were well handled. Came out twenty years too soon,--that was the
trouble. One of our leading scholars was speaking of it to me the other
day. 'We must have a new edition,' he said; 'people are just ripe for
that book.' Did you ever think of that? Change the form of it a little,
and give it a new title, and it will be a popular book. Five thousand or
more, very likely."

Mr. Gridley felt as if he had been rapidly struck on the forehead with a
dozen distinct blows from a hammer not quite big enough to stun him. He
sat still without saying a word. He had forgotten for the moment all
about poor Gifted Hopkins, who had got out his manuscript at last, and
was calming the disturbed corners of it. Coming to himself a little, he
took a large and beautiful silk handkerchief, one of his new purchases,
from his pocket, and applied it to his face, for the weather seemed to
have grown very warm all at once. Then he remembered the errand on which
he had come, and thought of this youth, who had got to receive his first
hard lesson in life, and whom he had brought to this kind man that it
should be gently admini