The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

From one phase of his experience with his story, Ray took a hint, and / made bold to ask Mr. Brandreth if he could not give him some manuscripts / to read; he had rather a fancy for playing the part of some other man's / destiny since he could have so little to do with deciding his own. / Chapley & Co. had not much work of that kind to give, but they turned / over a number of novels to him, and he read them with a jealous / interest; he wished first of all to find whether other people were / writing better novels than his, and he hoped to find that they were not. / Mostly, they really were not, and they cumulatively strengthened him / against an impulse which he had more than once had to burn his / manuscript. From certain of the novels he read he got instruction both / of a positive and negative kind; for it was part of his business to look / at their construction, and he never did this without mentally revising / the weak points of his story, and considering how he could repair them.

There was not a great deal of money in this work; but Ray got ten or / fifteen dollars for reading a manuscript and rendering an opinion of it, / and kept himself from the depravation of waiting for the turn of the / cards. He waited for nothing; he worked continually, and he filled up / the intervals of the work that was given to him with work that he made / for himself. He wrote all sorts of things, -- essays, stories, sketches, / poems, -- and sent them about to the magazines and the weekly newspapers / and the syndicates. When the editors were long in reporting upon them, / he went and asked for a decision; and in audacious moments he carried / his manuscript to them, and tried to surprise an instant judgment from / them. This, if it were in the case of a poem, or a very short sketch, he / could sometimes get; and it was usually adverse, as it usually was in / the case of the things he sent them by mail. They were nowhere unkindly; / they were often sympathetic, and suggested that what was not exactly / adapted to their publications might be adapted to the publication of a / fellow-editor; they were willing to sacrifice one another in his behalf. / They did not always refuse his contributions. Kane, who witnessed his / struggles at this period with an interest which he declared truly / paternal, was much struck by the fact that Ray's failures and successes / exactly corresponded to those of business men; that is, he failed / ninety-five times out of a hundred to get his material printed. His / effort was not of the vast range suggested by these numbers; he had a / few manuscripts that were refused many times over, and made up the large / sum of his rejections by the peculiar disfavor that followed them.

Besides these regular attacks on the literary periodicals, Ray carried / on guerilla operations of several sorts. He sold jokes at two dollars / apiece to the comic papers; it sometimes seemed low for jokes, but the / papers paid as much for a poor joke as a good one, and the market was / steady. He got rather more for jokes that were ordered of him, as when / an editor found himself in possession of an extremely amusing / illustration without obvious meaning. He developed a facility wholly / unexpected to himself in supplying the meaning for a picture of this / kind; if it were a cartoon, he had the courage to ask as much as five / dollars for his point.

A mere accident opened up another field of industry to him, when one day / a gentleman halted him at the foot of the stairway to an elevated / station, and after begging his pardon for first mistaking him for a / Grand Army man, professed himself a journalist in momentary difficulty.

"I usually sell my things to the _Sunday Planet_, but my last poem was / too serious for their F. S., and I'm down on my luck. Of course, I see / _now_," said the journalist in difficulty, "that you _couldn't_ have / been in the war; at first glance I took you for an old comrade of mine; / but if you'll leave your address with me -- Thank you, sir! Thank you!"

Ray had put a quarter in his hand, and he thought he had bought the / right to ask him a question.

"I know that I may look twice my age when people happen to see double" --

"Capital! " said the veteran. "First-rate! " and he clapped Ray on the / shoulder, and then clung to him long enough to recover his balance.

"But _would_ you be good enough to tell me what the F. S. of the _Sunday / Planet_ is?"

"Why, the Funny Side -- the page where they put the jokes and the comic / poetry. F. S. for short. Brevity is the soul of wit, you know."

Ray hurried home and put together some of the verses that had come back / to him from the comic papers, and mailed them to the _Sunday Planet_. He / had learned not to respect his work the less for being rejected, but the / _Planet_ did not wane in his esteem because the editor of the F. S. / accepted all his outcast verses. The pay was deplorably little, however, / and for the first time he was tempted to consider an offer of / partnership with a gentleman who wrote advertisements for a living, and / who, in the falterings of his genius from overwork, had professed / himself willing to share his honors and profits with a younger man; the / profits, at any rate, were enormous.

But this temptation endured only for a moment of disheartenment. In all / his straits Ray not only did his best, but he kept true to a certain / ideal of himself as an artist. There were some things he could not do / even to make a living. He might sell anything he wrote, and he might / write anything within the bounds of honesty that would sell, but he / could not sell his pen, or let it for hire, to be used as the lessee / wished. It was not the loftiest grade of esthetics or ethics, and / perhaps the distinctions he made were largely imaginary. But he refused / the partnership offered him, though it came with a flattering / recognition of his literary abilities, and of his peculiar fitness for / the work proposed.