never saw him.

FRANK CONFESSIONS OF A PUBLISHER'S READER

[_Denis Dulcet, brother of the well-known poet Dunraven Dulcet and the
extremely well-known literary agent Dove Dulcet, was for many years the
head reader for a large publishing house. It was my good fortune to know
him intimately, and when he could be severed from his innumerable
manuscripts, which accompanied him everywhere, even in bed, he was very
good company. His premature death from reader's cramp and mental hernia
was a sad loss to the world of polite letters. Thousands of mediocre
books would have been loaded upon the public but for his incisive and
unerring judgment. When he lay on his deathbed, surrounded by half-read
MSS., he sent for me, and with an air of extreme solemnity laid a packet
in my hand. It contained the following confession, and it was his last
wish that it should be published without alteration. I include it here
in memory of my very dear friend_.]

In my youth I was wont to forecast various occupations for myself.
Engine driver, tugboat captain, actor, statesman, and wild animal
trainer--such were the visions with which I put myself to sleep. Never
did the merry life of a manuscript reader swim into my ken. But here I
am, buried elbow deep in the literary output of a commercial democracy.
My only excuse for setting down these paragraphs is the hope that other
more worthy members of the ancient and honorable craft may be induced to
speak out in meeting. In these days when every type of man is
interviewed, his modes of thinking conned and commented upon, why not a
symposium of manuscript readers? Also I realized the other day, while
reading a manuscript by Harold Bell Wright, that my powers are failing.
My old trouble is gaining on me, and I may not be long for this world.
Before I go to face the greatest of all Rejection Slips, I want to utter
my message without fear or favour.

As a class, publishers' readers are not vocal. They spend their days and
nights assiduously (in the literal sense) bent over mediocre stuff,
poking and poring in the unending hope of finding something rich and
strange. A gradual _stultitia_ seizes them. They take to drink; they
beat their wives; they despair of literature. Worst, and most
preposterous, they one and all nourish secret hopes of successful
authorship. You might think that the interminable flow of turgid
blockish fiction that passes beneath their weary eyes would justly
sicken them of