There were letters from editors; editors whom I know well now, but who
in those distant days addressed me as "Sir," and were mine
faithfully. They regretted that they could not use the present
contribution, but hoped that I would continue to write. I continued to
write. Trusting that I would persevere, they were mine very truly. I
persevered. Now they are mine ever. From what a long way off those
letters have come. "Dear Sir," the Great Man wrote to me, and
overawed I locked the precious letter up. Yesterday I smacked him on
the back.
There was a list of my first fifteen contributions to the Press. Three
of them were accepted; two of the three appeared in a paper which
immediately went bankrupt. For the fifteenth I seem to have received
fifteen shillings. A shilling an attempt, you see, for those early
efforts to set the Thames on fire. Reading the titles of them, I am
not surprised. One was called (I blush to record it) "The Diary of a
Free-Lance." Was there ever a literary aspirant who did not begin
with just such an article on just such a subject?--a subject so
engagingly fresh to himself, so hackneyed to the editor.
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