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A Battle of the Books, Recorded by an Unknown Writer, for the Use of Authors and Publishers, Ed. and Publ. by Gail Hamilton
A Battle of the Books Recorded by an Unknown Writer for the Use of Authors and Publishers Ed and Publ by Gail Hamilton Author:Mary Abigail Dodge General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1870 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: VIII. ARRANGEMENT OF PRELIMINARIES. T the appointed time, Mr. Parry presented himself. But instead of proceeding, at once, to settling the preliminaries of the proposed arbitration, he wished to discuss the question at issue to see if we could not settle it between ourselves. I unhesitatingly declined, as I had from the beginning declined to do so. He said he had brought with him the papers and figures to show exactly how we stood. I declined to look at them, telling him that I was entirely incompetent to make a satisfactory examination of such a point, being unsound even on the multiplication-table. He asked if I would not be satisfied, supposing they could clearly prove that I had made more money out of the books than they had. I said not at all, that I had arrived at that point where I did not, in the least, care how much the publishers made ; that if other authors had ten per cent., I wanted ten per cent., even if the publishers had to beg their bread from door to door. He seemed a little nonplused at such heartlessness; said he had come prepared toshow that they had made only about seven tenths as much as I, and he had supposed that would satisfy me. As I affirmed it would not, he was somewhat at a loss how to proceed. I told him that in the beginning, that -- and a great deal less, indeed -- would have satisfied me, but that affairs had gone on so long, and feeling been so much aroused, that no sort of explanation would satisfy me ; that I wished the matter to go entirely away from ourselves into the hands of unprejudiced and uninterested persons. [After several months of profound reflectio...« less