"I am afraid," he went on, "if I asked you to leave your manuscript on approbation, it might be months before our readers could look at it.

We have scores, if not hundreds, waiting." "Could you recommend any publisher to me ?" asked Felicita.
"Why not go again to Price and Gould ?" he inquired.
"I must get more money than they pay me," she answered ingenuously.
The publisher shrugged his shoulders.

If her manuscript had contained Milton's "Paradise Lost" or Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," such an admission would have swamped it.

There is no fate swift enough for an unknown author who asks for more money than that which a publisher's sense of justice awards to him.
"I am sorry I can do nothing for you," he said, "but my time is very precious.

Good-morning--No thanks, I beg.