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Mr. Follett: I think there is no question but that we should hold the defendant in contempt.

Mrs. Atherton: Mutual, I assure you. (She sweeps out of the room and a large section of the public quietly follows her.)

Clerk Phelps: Joseph Hergesheimer to the bar! (A short, stocky fellow with twinkling eyes steps forward.) Mr. Hergesheimer?

Mr. Hergesheimer: Right.

Mr. Reedy: Good boy, Joe!

Mr. Follett: It won’t do, it won’t do at all. There’s only The Three Black Pennys and Gold and Iron and a novel called Java Head to go by. Saturday Evening Post. And bewilderingly unlike each other. Seem artistic but are too popular, I fancy, really to be sound.

Mr. Hergesheimer: With all respect, I should like to ask whether this is a court of record?

Mr. Howells: It is.

Mr. Hergesheimer: In that case I think I shall press for a verdict which may be very helpful to me. I should like also to have the members of the court on record respecting my work.

Mr. Boynton: Just as I feared. My dear fellow, while we should like to be helpful and will endeavor to give you advice to that end it must be done unobtrusively ... current reviews ... we’ll compare your work with that of Hawthorne and Hardy or perhaps a standard Frenchman. That will give you something to work for. But you cannot expect us to say anything definite about you at this stage of your work. Suppose we were to say what we really think, or what some really think, that you are the most promising writer in America to-day, promising in the sense that you have most of your work before you and in the sense that your work is both popular and artistically fine. Don’t you see the risk?