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. I have returned a hundred of them since without a word of encouragement to the writers, blissfully forgetful of the fact (now brought to light) that I, too, had begun like that.
And last of all, in this locked cabinet I came upon an actual contribution, one of the fifteen which had gone the rounds and had been put away, perhaps for a re-writing.... Dear, dear! I must have been very hopeful in those days. Youth and hope--I am afraid that those were my only qualifications for setting the Thames on fire.
Yet I was very scornful of editors seventeen years ago. The outsider, I held forth, was not given a chance; the young writer with fresh ideas was cold-shouldered. Well, well! Reading this early contribution of mine seventeen years later, reading again what editors had to say about it, I am no longer scornful of them. I can only wonder why they hoped that I would go on writing.
But I shall not throw the broken cabinet away, even though it is no longer available for secret papers. It must continue to sit in a corner of the library, a corrective against secret pride.