Chapter XXIV - Page 2

and for very shame's sake he could not go to his sister's.
To cap misfortune, the postman, in his afternoon round, brought him
five returned manuscripts. Then it was that Martin wore his
overcoat down into Oakland, and came back without it, but with five
dollars tinkling in his pocket. He paid a dollar each on account
to the four tradesmen, and in his kitchen fried steak and onions,
made coffee, and stewed a large pot of prunes. And having dined,
he sat down at his table-desk and completed before midnight an
essay which he entitled "The Dignity of Usury." Having typed it
out, he flung it under the table, for there had been nothing left
from the five dollars with which to buy stamps.

Later on he pawned his watch, and still later his wheel, reducing
the amount available for food by putting stamps on all his
manuscripts and sending them out. He was disappointed with his
hack-work. Nobody cared to buy. He compared it with what he found
in the newspapers, weeklies, and cheap magazines, and decided that
his was better, far better, than the average; yet it would not
sell. Then he discovered that most of the newspapers printed a
great deal of what was called "plate" stuff, and he got the address
of the association that furnished it. His own work that he sent in
was returned, along with a stereotyped slip informing him that the
staff supplied all the copy that was needed.

In one of the great juvenile periodicals he noted whole columns of
incident and anecdote. Here was a chance. His paragraphs were
returned, and though he tried repeatedly he never succeeded in
placing one. Later on, when it no longer mattered, he learned that
the associate editors and sub-editors augmented their salaries by
supplying those paragraphs themselves. The comic weeklies returned
his jokes and humorous verse, and the light society verse he wrote
for the large magazines found no abiding-place. Then there was the
newspaper storiette. He knew that he could write better ones than
were published. Managing to obtain the addresses of two newspaper
syndicates, he deluged them with storiettes. When he had written
twenty and failed to place one of them, he ceased. And yet, from
day to day, he read storiettes in the dailies and weeklies, scores
and scores of storiettes, not one of which would compare with his.
In his despondency, he concluded that he had no judgment whatever,
that he was hypnotized by what he wrote, and that he was a self-
deluded pretender.

The inhuman editorial machine ran smoothly as ever. He folded the
stamps in with his manuscript, dropped it into the letter-box, and
from three weeks to a month afterward the postman came up the steps
and handed him the manuscript. Surely there were no live, warm