shillings from one periodical for "Men Who Have Missed Their Own
Weddings," and, later, a guinea from the same for "Single Day
Marriages." That paper has a penchant for the love-interest. Yet when I
sent it my "Duchesses Who Have Married Dustmen," it came back by the
early post next day. That was to me the worst part of those grey days.
I had my victories, but they were always followed by a series of
defeats. I would have a manuscript accepted by an editor. "Hullo," I
would say, "here's the man at last, the Editor-Who-Believes-In-Me. Let
the thing go on." I would send him off another manuscript. He would
take it. Victory, by Jove! Then--_wonk_! Back would come my third
effort with the curtest of refusals. I always imagined editors in those
days to be pettish, whimsical men who amused themselves by taking up a
beginner, and then, wearying of the sport, dropped him back into the
slime from which they had picked him.

In the intervals of articles I wrote short stories, again for the same
three papers. As before, I studied these papers carefully to see what
they wanted; then worked out a mechanical plot, invariably with a
quarrel in the first part, an accident, and a rescue in the middle, and
a reconciliation at the end--told it in a style that makes me hot all
over when I think of it, and sent it up, enclosing a stamped addressed
envelope in case of rejection. A very useful precaution, as it always
turned out.

It was the little knowledge to which I have referred above which kept
my walls so thickly covered with rejection forms. I was in precisely
the same condition as a man who has been taught the rudiments of
boxing. I knew just enough to hamper me, and not enough to do me any
good. If I had simply blundered straight at my work and written just
what occurred to me in my own style, I should have done much better. I