“Five guineas a column,” was my reply.
“Five guineas a column. Tush! I’ll give you one guinea; and take six articles.”
I had only been a widow a short time, and was in deep, dull black, with the little uniform muslin collar and cuffs. He looked me up and down. Perhaps he thought I wanted the money badly, and repeated “A guinea a column, no more.”
“But I cannot take less than five. I am going abroad to get the information, and six guineas would not pay the ticket one way.”
“Ten guineas for the six, then.”
“No,” I replied, sticking firmly to my guns; “I am sorry I cannot do them for that. Good morning.”
He barely raised his eyes from the paper. He did not even rise, nor open the door. I stepped out, choking with humiliation and tears, but with my head still high.
I wrote several books in the following years and many magazine articles, but for five long years my name never once appeared in that gentleman’s paper. Probably the only paper in the country into which some sort of notice of something of mine did not creep.
He paid me out; but I survived.
Another time, I was dining in Grosvenor Street. A charming young man took me in to dinner. He asked a number of questions, spoke much of my past work and future plans. Being surprised, I said: