_ Book Fifth
Initial Chapter
CONTAINING MR. CAXTON's UNAVAILING CAUTION NOT TO BE DULL.
"I hope, Pisistratus," said my father, "that you do not intend to be dull?"
"Heaven forbid, sir! What could make you ask such a question? Intend! No! if I am dull it is from innocence."
"A very long discourse upon knowledge!" said my father; "very long! I should cut it out."
I looked upon my father as a Byzantian sage might have looked on a Vandal. "Cut it out!"
"Stops the action, sir!" said my father, dogmatically.
"Action! But a novel is not a drama."
"No; it is a great deal longer,--twenty times as long, I dare say," replied Mr. Caxton, with a sigh.
"Well, sir, well! I think my Discourse upon Knowledge has much to do with the subject, is vitally essential to the subject; does not stop the action,--only explains and elucidates the action. And I am astonished, sir, that you, a scholar, and a cultivator of knowledge--"
"There, there!" cried my father, deprecatingly. "I yield, I yield! What better could I expect when I set up for a critic? What author ever lived that did not fly into a passion, even with his own father, if his father presumed to say, 'Cut out'!"
MRS. CAXTON.--"My dear Austin, I am sure Pisistratus did not mean to offend you, and I have no doubt he will take your--"
PISISTRATUS (hastily).--"Advice for the future, certainly. I will quicken the action, and--"
"Go on with the Novel," whispered Roland, looking up from his eternal account-book. "We have lost L200 by our barley!"
Therewith I plunged my pen into the ink, and my thoughts into the "Fair Shadowland." _