likes the highest things in literary art. Their readers, if we
may judge from the quality of the literature they get, are more
refined than the book readers in our community; and their taste
has no doubt been cultivated by that of the disciplined and
experienced editors. So far as I have known these they are men
of aesthetic conscience, and of generous sympathy. They have
their preferences in the different kinds, and they have their
theory of what kind will be most acceptable to their readers; but
they exercise their selective function with the wish to give them
the best things they can. I do not know one of them--and it has
been my good fortune to know them nearly all--who would print a
wholly inferior thing for the sake of an inferior class of
readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because
for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked.
Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance
the good thing they doubted of than underrate their readers'
judgment.

New writers often suppose themselves rejected because they are
unknown; but the unknown man of force and quality is of all
others the man whom the editor welcomes to his page. He knows
that there is always a danger that the reigning favorite may fail
to please; that at any rate, in the order of things, he is
passing away, and that if the magazine is not to pass away with
the men who have made it, there must be a constant infusion of
fresh life. Few editors are such fools and knaves as to let
their personal feeling disable their judgment; and the young
writer who gets his manuscript back may be sure that it is not
because the editor dislikes him, for some reason or no reason.
Above all, he can trust me that his contribution has not been