When we found ourselves alone with the roll of paper in our hands, we were very angry with Mrs. Brumby, but almost more angry with ourselves. We were in no way bound to the woman, and yet she had in some degree substantiated a claim upon us. We piqued ourselves specially on never making any promise beyond the vaguest assurance that this or that proposed contribution should receive consideration at some altogether undefined time; but now we were positively pledged to read Mrs. Brumby’s effusion and have our verdict ready by the day after tomorrow. We were wont, too, to keep ourselves much secluded from strangers; and here was Mrs. Brumby, who had already been with us twice, positively entitled to a third audience. We had been scolded, and then forgiven, and then ridiculed by a woman who was old, and ugly, and false! And there was present to us a conviction that though she was old, and ugly, and false, Mrs. Brumby was no ordinary woman. Perhaps it might be that she was really qualified to give us valuable assistance in regard to the magazine, as to which we must own we were sometimes driven to use matter that was not quite so brilliant as, for our readers’ sakes, we would have wished it to be. We feel ourselves compelled to admit that old and ugly women, taken on the average, do better literary work than they who are young and pretty. I did not like Mrs. Brumby, but it might be that in her the age would find another De Staël. So thinking, we cut the little string, and had the manuscript open in our own hands. We cannot remember whether she had already indicated to us the subject of the essay, but it was headed, “Costume in 18—.” There were perhaps thirty closely-filled pages, of which we read perhaps a third. The handwriting was unexceptionable, orderly, clean, and legible; but the matter was undeniable twaddle. It proffered advice to women that they should be simple, and to men that they should be cleanly in their attire. Anything of less worth for the purpose of amusement or of instruction could not be imagined. There was, in fact, nothing in it. It has been our fate to look at a great many such essays, and to cause them at once either to be destroyed or returned. There could be no doubt at all as to Mrs. Brumby’s essay.
She came punctual as the clock. As she seated herself in our chair and made some remark as to her hope that we were satisfied, we felt something like fear steal across our bosom. We were about to give offence, and dreaded the arguments that would follow. It was, however, quite clear that we could not publish Mrs. Brumby’s essay on Costume, and therefore, though she looked more like Minerva now than ever, we must go through our task. We told her in half-a-dozen words that we had read the paper, and that it would not suit our columns.
“Not suit your columns!” she said, looking at us by no means in sorrow, but in great anger. “You do not mean to trifle with me like that after all you have made me suffer?” We protested that we were responsible for none of her sufferings. “Sir,” she said, “when I was last here you owned the wrong you had done me.” We felt that we must protest against this, and we rose in our wrath. There were two of us angry now.
“Madam,” we said, “you have kindly offered us your essay, and we have courteously declined it. You will allow us to say that this must end the matter.” There were allusions here to kindness and courtesy, but the reader will understand that the sense of the words was altogether changed by the tone of the voice.
“Indeed, Sir, the matter will not be ended so. If you think that your position will enable you to trample upon those who make literature really a profession, you are very much mistaken.”
“Mrs. Brumby,” we said, “we can give you no other answer, and as our time is valuable—”
“Time valuable!” she exclaimed—and as she stood up an artist might have taken her for a model of Minerva had she only held a spear in her hand. “And is no time valuable, do you think, but yours? I had, Sir, your distinct promise that the paper should be published if it was left in your hands above a week.”
“That is untrue, Madam.”
“Untrue, Sir?”
“Absolutely untrue.” Mrs. Brumby was undoubtedly a woman, and might be very like a goddess, but we were not going to allow her to palm off upon us without flat contradiction so absolute a falsehood as that. “We never dreamed of publishing your paper.”
“Then why, Sir, have you troubled yourself to read it—from the beginning to the end?” We had certainly intimated that we had made ourselves acquainted with the entire essay, but we had in fact skimmed and skipped through about a third of it.
“How dare you say, Sir, you have never dreamed of publishing it, when you know that you studied it with that view?”
“We didn’t read it all,” we said, “but we read quite enough.”
“And yet but this moment ago you told me that you had perused it carefully.” The word peruse we certainly never used in our life. We object to “perusing,” as we do to “commencing” and “performing.” We
