out due regard to merit, you practise upon us the basest of false pretences. Look! You send us a great name, and behind it a tinkling cymbal or sounding brass. Is it not better to read behind an unknown name into such delights as "Marse Chan," "A Brother to Dragons," or "A Story of the Latin Quarter"?
In the July number of Lippincott's appeared one or two short articles from both authors and editors upon the difficulty of getting into print,—the biassed mind of the editor and his susceptibility to influence being the reason from the point of view of the author, and the number of contributions and their worthlessness in the long run, from that of the editor.
Both editor and author, however, were more or less down upon that wretched creature the amateur.
It is in the interest of this long-suffering devotee that I address the question, How can one cease to be an amateur? How become one of those professional and paid writers of whose contributions every editor will assure you he has a large stock always on hand?
The editor says, "Write as well as Howells and James and Stockton." But the trembling amateur acknowledges that he can't, and to encourage him I would humbly venture to remark that few can. Our magazines are not wholly supplied (more's the pity) by those gifted pens, but largely by others, and the amateur declares to himself he can write as well as these.
To the amateur I would say, Don't think to get in because you can write as well: you must write better. Also don't write to please what you think suits the public taste. The public taste will have time to change several times before your manuscript will, in all human probability, see the light, even after it is accepted. If you can find out what the editor individually likes, never mind the public. Write something that will please him! An Amateur.
I have been very much interested, instructed, and amused by your last "Monthly Gossip" article. Ah, you sly rogues of editors, how well you know what to put into your magazines! I turned at once to that article, and found it quite a tidbit. What! you really receive five thousand articles a year from contributors, or would-be contributors, and can accept only two hundred of them! Dear, dear me! What an amount of hope deferred, of heart-burning and bitter disappointment, is represented by these figures! Have you no poet to write an elegy or a lament on these unfortunate contributors,—these unsuccessful men of genius, shall I call them? How I pity them! I am awfully glad I am not one of them myself. I never offered you an article, thank heaven, and I probably never shall. Not that I distrust your judgment; not that I think you are not as fair as another; not that I wouldn't like to shine, like the others,—the successful contributors, I mean; but I don't care to let my poor literary bantling run the one chance in twenty-five of floating on your stream; I don't care to attempt something in which there is so little chance of being successful. I'd rather write for some less popular periodical, and be sure of having my articles accepted, than write with such a slim chance of acceptance for yours.
But, seriously, Mr. Editor, what, in the name of all that is sensible, drives so many people into such an unprofitable business? Is the hankering for literary fame such a wide-spread disease among Americans? Is it the desire of gain, in a country where there are so many surer and easier ways of making money?
