"Thank you, Mr. Manning. I need some books which I am not able to purchase, and can not find in this house; if you can spare them temporarily from your library, you will confer a great favor on me."
"Certainly. Have you a list of those which you require?"
"No, sir, but--"
"Here is a pencil and piece of paper; write down the titles, and I will have them sent to you in the morning."
She turned to the table to prepare the list, and all the while Mr. Manning's keen eyes scanned her countenance, dress, and figure. A half-smile once more stirred his grave lips when she gave him the paper, over which he glanced indifferently.
"Miss Earl, I fear you will regret your determination to make literature a profession; for your letters informed me that you are poor; and doubtless you remember the witticism concerning the 'republic of letters which contained not a sovereign.' Your friend, Mr. Murray, appreciated the obstacles you are destined to encounter, and I am afraid you will not find life in New York as agreeable as it was under his roof."
"When did you hear from him?"
"I received a letter this morning."
"And you called to see me because he requested you to do so?"
"I had determined to come before his letter arrived."
He noticed the incredulous smile that flitted across her face, and, after a moment's pause, he continued: "I do not wish to discourage you, on the contrary, I sincerely desire to aid you, but Mill has analyzed the subject very ably in his 'Political Economy,' and declares that 'on any rational calculation of chances in the existing competition, no writer can hope to gain a living by books; and to do so by magazines and reviews becomes daily more difficult.'"
"Yes, sir, that passage is not encouraging; but I comfort myself with another from the same book: 'In a national or universal point of view the labor of the savant or speculative thinker is as much a part of production, in the very narrowest sense, as that of the inventor of a practical art. The electro-magnetic telegraph was the wonderful and most unexpected consequence of the experiments of Oersted, and the mathematical investigations of Ampere; and the modern art of navigation is an unforseen emanation from the purely speculative and apparently meekly curious inquiry, by the mathematicians of Alexandria, into the properties of three curves formed by the intersection of a plane surface and a cone. No limit can be set to the importance, even in a purely productive and material point of view, of mere thought.' Sir, the economic law which regulates the wages of mechanics should operate correspondingly in the realm of letters."