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

“And what becomes of all those 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?”

“Oh, I’ll arrange that.  He always goes to his luncheon about this time.  Raw meat and vitriol punch,—­that ’s what the authors say.  Wait till we hear him go, and then I will lay your manuscript so that he will come to it among the first after he gets back.  You shall see with your own eyes what treatment it gets.  I hope it may please him, but you shall see.”

They went back to the publisher’s private room and talked awhile.  Then the little office-boy came up with some vague message about a gentleman—­business—­wants to see you, sir, etc., according to the established programme; all in a vacant, mechanical sort of way, as if he were a talking-machine just running down.

The publisher told the boy that he was engaged, and the gentleman must wait.  Very soon they heard The Butcher’s heavy footstep as he went out to get his raw meat and vitriol punch.

“Now, then,” said the publisher, and led forth the confiding literary lamb once more, to enter the fatal door of the critical shambles.

“Hand me your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Hopkins.  I will lay it so that it shall be the third of these that are coming to hand.  Our friend here is a pretty good judge of verse, and knows a merchantable article about as quick as any man in his line of business.  If he forms a favorable opinion of your poems, we will talk over your propositions.”

Gifted was conscious of a very slight tremor as he saw his precious manuscript deposited on the table, under two others, and over a pile of similar productions.  Still he could not help feeling that the critic would be struck by his title.  The quotation from Gray must touch his feelings.  The very first piece in the collection could not fail to arrest him.  He looked a little excited, but he was in good spirits.

“We will be looking about here when our friend comes back,” the publisher said. " He is a very methodical person, and will sit down and go right to work just as if we were not here.  We can watch him, and if he should express any particular interest in your poems, I will, if you say so, carry you up to him and reveal the fact that you are the author of the works that please him.”