s meant that B had to postpone his book. Then a
publishing house took a story which the same author had sold direct to
it for magazine publication, without reserving book rights, and
brought such story out in book form. This meant another complication.
After B had postponed his book twice the author produced another book
which he thought better than the second book, and wished published
before B's book. Four times B was asked to postpone his book and each
time agreed to, though not without certain _quid pro quos_. All these
matters the agent had to straighten out, while the author was living
three thousand miles away.

The agent can also be of use to the author because he looks at any
manuscript in an objective rather than in a subjective way. The
author, who has toiled and striven over the child of his brain,
regards it as fathers generally regard their children. Sometimes he
cannot see its faults, sometimes he misjudges its virtues. It is too
much a part of himself to be regarded coldly and calmly. When the
publisher makes an offer for a book the author may with hasty disdain
wish to reject it as entirely inadequate, or he may wish to accept it
with eager haste, so glad is he for the chance of seeing the book in
print. In this state of hasty acceptance or hasty rejection, the agent
can look upon an offer calmly and dispassionately, to be accepted or
rejected as the author's best interests shall dictate. Then again, as
time goes on, more and more authors must live at a distance from the
great centres. Some of them live in the uttermost parts of the earth.
One author wrote recently to his agent from the wilds of Africa,
saying, "I have found a nicely secluded spot, surrounded by gorillas
and chimpanzees." To such authors it is essential that they should
have an agent who is in touch with the publishers who are publishing
their works.

Then again, the agent can be of use to the author in sparing him some
of the bitterness that the author feels when his manuscript is
rejected. Who that has read it can ever forget the story of how
Hawthorne, while still struggling for success, submitted a collection
of short stories to a publisher, and of how the publisher, not having
much capital, laid the manuscript aside, intending to publish it when
things were a little easier; and how Hawthorne, after months of dreary
waiting, wrote an angry letter to the publisher, and when he got the
manuscript back, in bitter, hopeless rage burne