productions, Mr----rr--Popkins."

"Hopkins, if you please, sir, not Popkins," said Gifted, plaintively. He
expressed his willingness to dispose of the copyright, to publish on
shares, or perhaps to receive a certain percentage on the profits.

"Suppose we take a glass of wine together, Mr.----Hopkins, before we
talk business," the publisher said, opening a little cupboard and taking
therefrom a decanter and two glasses. He saw the young man was looking
nervous. He waited a few minutes, until the wine had comforted his
epigastrium, and diffused its gentle glow through his unspoiled and
consequently susceptible organization.

"Come with me," he said.

Gifted followed him into a dingy apartment in the attic, where one sat
at a great table heaped and piled with manuscripts. By him was a huge
basket, half full of manuscripts also. As they entered he dropped
another manuscript into the basket and looked up.

"Tell me," said Gifted, "what are these papers, and who is he that looks
upon them and drops them into the basket?"

"These are the manuscript poems that we receive, and the one sitting at
the table is commonly spoken of among us as The Butcher. The poems he
drops into the basket are those rejected as of no account."

"But does he not read the poems before he rejects them?"

"He tastes them. Do you eat a cheese before you buy it?"

"And what becomes of all these that he drops into the basket?"

"If they are not claimed by their author in proper season they go to the
devil."

"What!" said Gifted, with his eyes stretched very round.

"To the paper factory, where they have a horrid machine they call the
devil, that tears everything to bits,--as the critics treat our authors,
sometimes,--_sometimes_, Mr. Hopkins."

Gifted devoted a moment to silent reflection.

After this instructive sight they returned together to the publisher's
private room. The wine had now warmed the youthful poet's praecordia, so
that he began to feel a renewed confidence in his genius and his
fortunes.

"I should like to know what that critic of yours would say to _my_
manuscript," he said boldly.

"You can try it, if you want to," the publisher replied, with an ominous
dryness of manner which the sanguine youth did not perceive, or,
perceiving, did not heed.

"How can we manage to get an impartial judgment?"

"O, I'll arrange that. He always goes to his luncheon about this time.
Raw meat and vitriol punch,--that's what the autho