He began to compose a manifesto to the world; and towards morning he came home and shut himself in and wrote it. He called it “Business and Art;” and in it he told about his book, and how he had worked over it. He told, quite frankly, what the book was; and he asked if there was anywhere in the United States a publisher who published books because they were noble, and not because they sold; or if there was a critic, or booklover, or philanthropist, or a person of any sort, who would stand by a true artist. “This artist will work all day and nearly all night,” he wrote, “and he wants less than the wages of a day-laborer. All else that ever comes to him in his life he will give for a chance to follow his career!”
Then Corydon awoke, and he read it to her. She listened, thrilling with amazement.
“Oh, Thyrsis!” she cried. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to have it printed,” he said, “and send it to all the publishers; and also to literary men and to magazines.”
“And are you going to sign your name to it?” she cried.
“I’ve already signed my name to it,” he answered.
“As soon as the book comes back from the next publisher.”
Then he sat down to breakfast; and afterwards, without resting, he finished the pot-boiler, and took it to the editor. After a due interval he went again, trembling and faint with anxiety. He had sold only one book-review, and he was using Corydon’s money again. People who hated him had predicted that he would do just that, and he had answered that he would die first!
He came home, radiant with delight. “He says he’ll take it!” he proclaimed. “Only I’ve got to do a new ending for the fourth installment--he wants something more exciting. So I’m going to have the countess caught in a burning tower!”
And he wrote that, and went yet again, and came home with a hundred dollars buttoned tightly in his inside vest-pocket. He was like a man who has escaped from a dungeon. The field was clear before him at last! His manifesto was going out to the world!
_They sat, gazing down the slope of the little vale. She was turning idly the pages of the book, and she read to him--
“Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!-- Only, methinks, some loss of habit’s power Befalls me wandering through this upland dim. Once pass’d I blindfold here, at any hour; Now seldom come I, since I came with him.”