In the course of time order grew out of the chaos. A chapter of my monumental work on Mischief was finished. It was made ready in a neat copy with hardly an erasure and, having an air of completeness in itself, was sent as a separate article to Lippincott's Magazine, for I decided magnanimously that, as I was a Philadelphian, Philadelphia should have the first chance. I had no doubts of it as a prophetic utterance, as a world-convulsing message, but the Editor of Lippincott's had. He refused it.
How it hurt, that prompt refusal! All my literary hopes came toppling over and I saw myself condemned to the old idleness and dependence. But our spirits when we are young go up as quickly as they go down. I recalled stories I had heard of great men hawking about their MSS. from publisher to publisher. Carlyle, I said to myself, had suffered and almost every writer of note—it was a sign of genius to be refused. Therefore,—the logic of it was clear and convincing—the refusal proved me a genius! A more substantial reassurance was the publication of the same article, done over and patched up and with the fine title of Mischief in the Middle Ages, in the Atlantic Monthly a very few months later. And when, on top of this, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the Editor of the Atlantic, wrote and told me he would be pleased to have further articles from me; when, in answer to a letter my Uncle had insisted on my writing, Oliver Wendell Holmes promised me his interest in Mischief as I proposed to define it, I saw the world at my feet where, to my sorrow,
