Prentice Mulford's story: life by land and sea

by Prentice Mulford

And how many times after I had suffered and rejected the MSS. did I try to answer in a manner satisfactory to them this question: “Did I know of any newspaper or magazine that would be likely to accept their matter?” How I tried to say that I did not, in a cheerful, consoling, and encouraging manner, in a manner which would convey to them and fill them with the idea that the town was full of places yawning and gaping for their articles, until they were outside of my office themselves, when I was willing that the cold unwelcome truth should freeze them.

Then I received letters asking for the return of manuscript. On entering on my duties I found the shelves piled with them—legacies left me by various predecessors—whether read, accepted, or rejected, I could not find out. But there they lay roll on roll—silent, dust covered. It seemed a literary receiving vault, full of corpses.

It was a suggestive and solemn spectacle for a young writer to look upon. Those many pounds of manuscript—articles which might make a sensation if printed—truths, maybe, which had not yet dawned on the world—all lying unread, dead, cold and unpublished.

Lone, lorn ladies came to me with the children of their brains. I referred them at times to the editor of the daily up-stairs. He referred them to me back again. Sometimes this shuttlecock process was reversed. The daily editor fired the applicant down at me. I fired him up again. The trouble in all these cases lay in the inability of these people to recognize a rejection when it was mildly and sympathetically applied. It was necessary in some cases for us to fire these people up and down at each other a dozen times before their weary legs gave them a hint of the true state of the case.

I saw more than once the man who thought to clinch an acceptance of his matter by giving me a long explanation of his article, and its value to this or that interest. I had the traveller from distant lands, who wanted to tell in print over again what he had seen. I received copies of verses, accompanied by modest notes from the senders that they might find a place “in some corner” of the paper. I was beset by a delusionist who had a theory for doing away with death, and who left me, as he said to “prefer death” and die in my sins, because I told him I had really no desire to obtain information on the subject.

Then I had the “space grabber” to deal with—the poor fellow who writes to live at so much per column, who tries to write as many columns as possible, and half of whose mind while writing is working more to fill up his columns with words rather than ideas. But our modern system of elephantine journalism is in a measure responsible for the “space grabbing” tendency, since our daily and weekly journalistic mammoths and megatheriums gape ever for more and more matter. There is so much space which must be filled, and if not filled stuffed. Every demand brings some sort of supply, and as the paper must be stuffed, the “space grabber” is developed to stuff it.

I had also to cope and meet with the literary rehasher. The rehasher is another journalistic brother who writes the same story, experience, description, etc., over and over again in different ways. He wrote it years ago. It proved a success. He has been writing it ever since. He serves it up roast, baked, boiled, broiled, fried, stewed.

These processes may endure for several years. Then he shoves it on your table, covered with a thin disguise—a gravy, so to speak—of his more recent opinion or experience. But it is about the same dish. The older and more experienced journalistic nose detects it by the same old smell. Finally it comes up as hash, plain hash, dry hash, wet hash, baked hash, but after all the same old hash.

Our papers and magazines even to-day abound with the work of the rehasher. It is just as good for the young readers. Every ten years a generation comes along for whom the rehash is quite new. They do not know that it is the same old hash written and read years and years ago by people dead and gone. The pretentious magazines dish up more or less of this hash. It is served up in style, garnished with sprigs of fine language and sentiment and has often a “dressing” of elegant illustrations poured over it. But it’s the same old hash for all that. If you look over the magazines for a period say of twenty years, you will find these rehashes—articles descriptive of Rome, Egypt, London, the Bayeaux tapestry, travels in countries worn footsore by travellers for generations, the essay on Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. As for the frontier romance and “Wild Injun” story, that has been ground and reground into hash so fine that it has become “spoon victuals,” and is eaten only by the young and callow of the reading brood.

A literary colleague, who commands an editorial chair, says that he allows his rehashers to serve him the same article four times, providing the garnishing and dressing of the dish show artistic cookery. But he shuts down after that. This is not only charitable on his part, but possibly a great benefit to the rehasher, for if he is allowed to go on unchecked, the mental rehashing process will become automatic, the result of which will be the unconscious rehashing of the same article through all eternity.