XIII
A SACRIFICE HIT
THE editor of the Hearthstone Magazine has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eye-glasses.
“The Hearthstone,” he will say, “does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers.”
That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out:
When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the news-stand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5.30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty —th street, the cook and maid at his home—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the
