Nothing! Ay, you foolish Wisdoms, that spend your days in spinning clothes of air with which to clothe the long procession of Humanity, behold I here, a starving beggar-boy, laugh at you and say to you what you know: 'Why, you go naked,—naked, as when you came from your mother's womb!' Oh, oh, oh! we are all fools together. And there's a consolation in that; but not much, if you happen to be starving.—Starving? I, starving,' I cried fiercely, 'with a better head on my shoulders than all these damned … Come, come, we mustn't boast—even now!'
Laughing a sad, short laugh, I stepped out and down, and began to descend.
Half way, or so, down, some impulse made me stop and look up. And I saw what I took for a small woman, coming down also, just above the seat where I had been standing. Seeing her, I laughed again.—The poor girl! (For, of course, it was my girl, following me.) She thought me, me! a good, kind, heaven-sent saviour, perhaps?
I burst out into a keen short laugh and went on: went on in home, with the wings of a shadowy bird-thing or moth-thing fluttering in my inner ear.—Up these weary old stairs with an up-pulling arm.—The landing at last.—My door open.—My room.
I took the match-box off its mantelpiece corner; found the candle; struck a light; lit it, and looked. Then I saw a large envelope lying on the table, and started.
I looked at the candle-light, one long half-vacant look, and turned and went to the table, and took up the letter and slowly opened it and read:
'Dear Sir,—Our reader thinks very well of your Poems; but as there is little sale in poetry now-a-days, he does not, on that account, think the work would command a remunerative sale. The following is an extract from the report which we have received on the ms. "There is evidence of power in his book which, with due care and cultivation, may ripen into ability to achieve real and lasting poetic work."
'If it were not for the poor attention poetry attracts in these days, we would gladly have made you an offer for a little work which contains so much beauty and melody.—
Yours faithfully, Parker, Innes, & Co.'
'We are sending the ms. to you per book-post.'
