"That's where you are wrong," said Quincy. "There has been the devil to
pay ever since I landed in the town, and I've got mixed up in so many
complications that I don't expect to get back to town before next
Christmas. But what are you doing, Ernst?"
"Oh, I am in for literature; not the kind that consists in going round
with a notebook and prying into people's business, with a hope one day
of becoming an editor, and working twenty hours out of the twenty-four
each day. Not a bit of it, I am reader for ----;" and he mentioned the
name of a large publishing house. "I have my own hours and a comfortable
salary. I sit like Solomon upon the efforts of callow authors and the
productions of ripened genius. Sometimes I discover a diamond in the
rough, and introduce a new star to the literary firmament; and at other
times I cut up some egotistical old writer, who thinks anything he turns
out will be sure to please the public."
"How fortunate that I have met you?" said Quincy. "I have in this little
carpet bag the first effusions of one of those callow authors of whom
you spoke.
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