Six of these piles he may throw away or return to the friends who loaned them—or the Public Library, as the case may be. He must then take the seventh pile and placing the pages end to end on the floor—the roof of the house will do if the floor be too small—and procuring a strip of paper of exactly the same length, begin the Story at one end and continue writing until he reaches the other end.
This will insure the work’s being of the right length for an American Short Story, and, if Mr. O’Brien’s other two conditions as to “form and substance” are properly fulfilled, the Story will be quite all right and may be published—with three Asterisks—in the Roll of Honor for the following year.
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The luncheon hour at the O’Brien Sweatshop is devoted to an Efficiency Drill of all the Asterisks employed.
The Drill lasts an hour and is designed to keep the Asterisks in perfect physical condition for their arduous work.
First, there is a grand march of Asterisks in varying formations of ones, twos and threes. This is followed by running matches and exhibitions of high jumping, wrestling and leaping through hoops.
An exciting game of Roll of Honor closes the exercises.
This is the most violent exercise of all and consists of rolling blindfold down an inclined plane and landing in a huge pile of short stories.
The Asterisk that picks up the best Short Story, receives as a reward an honorable mention in the Annual Report.
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