"The Grandissimes" was so successful that the publishers are said to have sent the author a check for five hundred dollars more than the contract price. This first long tale was followed by another much the same in vein and in atmosphere, "Madame Delphine," which is the story-teller's own favorite. The subject and the style are equally delightful.
In 1879, when Mr. Cable was thirty-five years old, the business house in which he had worked to keep his feet on earth dissolved, and the clerk had to choose between returning to journalism and devoting himself entirely to literature. By this time he seems to have been more self-reliant and more confident. At any rate, he chose literature. The first thing he did was to decline to write for more than one publisher. It must be said again that a steadier head never produced a story.
A strong sense of duty, in fact, early established control of his work. His interests were not permitted to grow narrow. He realized that he possessed exceptionally abundant resources for the production of miscellaneous literature touching on the development of the middle South, and he determined to make the most of his possessions. In 1880, for example, we find him engaged in a special article on New Orleans for the Census Bureau, and his native city was also the theme of an article which he wrote for the "Encyclopedia Britannica." One of his critics has said: "Since Hawthorne's Custom House reports, few pages of the Government documents have been enriched by so discriminating a pen as in the exhaustive census monograph upon the past and present of the Southern metropolis." This paper led to a series of articles entitled "The Creoles of Louisiana," written for _The Century_, in which the reader will note an artistic combination of dry history and vivid imagination.
That such a painstaking, conscientious, dutiful writer should ever be charged with falling into an anachronism may seem preposterous; but although the charge has been made, we find no instance in which it has been sustained. A writer who once visited him brushed the charge aside vigorously: "Mr. Cable's plan of work," he said, "is unusually methodical, for his counting-room training has stood him in good stead. All his notes and references are carefully indexed and journalled, and so systematized that he can turn, without a moment's delay, to any authority he wishes to consult. In this respect, as in many others, he has not, perhaps, his equal among living authors. In making his notes, it is his usual custom to write in pencil on scraps of paper. These notes are next put into shape, still in pencil, and the third copy, intended for the press, is written in ink on note-paper--the chirography exceedingly neat, delicate and legible. He is always exact, and is untiring in his researches.... Before attempting to write upon any historical point, he gathers together all available material without reckoning time or trouble; and, under such conditions, nothing is more unlikely than that he should be guilty of error."