"Louis, Louis, work with me, all right?" Joseph leaned forward, looking earnest. "This is your dream. This dream says you're going to become a famous author. You write slam-bang adventure stories."
"I write abominably derivative fiction. The only good stuff's from life, my essays and the travel books."
"Come on, Louis, let's make this bird fly. You'll write adventure novels about the sea and historical times. People love them. You're a hit. You're bigger than Sir Walter Scott, all right?"
"He couldn't write a lucid sentence if his life had depended on it," Stevenson sneered. "Oh, this is all the rankest self-conceit anyway."
"Then what will it hurt you to listen? Now. I represent the Chronos Photo-Play Company. Let me explain what a photo-play is. We have patented a method of, uh, making magic-lantern pictures into a so! rt of effect of moving tableaux, if you can grasp that. Maybe you've read about the cinematograph? Oh, gee, no, you haven't." Joseph consulted his timepiece. "You'll just miss it. Never mind--So, in the Future, we have these exhibitions of our photo-plays and people pay admission to come in and watch them, the way they'd watch a real live play or an opera, with famous players and everything. But since we don't have to pay live actors or even move scenery, the profit margin for the exhibitor is enormous. See?"
Steven gaped at him a moment before responding. "I was wrong. I apologize. You may or may not be the Devil, but you're most assuredly a Yankee."
)
