So began my life as a newspaper man.
WILLIAM H. RIDEING
(1853-____)
REJECTED MANUSCRIPTS
Nowadays, it seems, every one reads, also writes. There are few streets where the callous postman does not occasionally render some doorstep desolate by the delivery of a rejected manuscript. Fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind, and the first steps in the career of a successful man of letters are always interesting. You remember how Franklin slyly dropped his first contribution through the slit in his brother's printing-house door; and how the young Charles Dickens crept softly to the letter-box up a dark court, off a dark alley, near Fleet Street.
In the case of Mr. Rideing, all must admire and be thankful for the indomitable spirit which disappointments were unable to discourage.
From "Many Celebrities and a Few Others," by William H. Rideing. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1913.
I do not know to a certainty just how or when the new ambition found its cranny and sprouted, and I wonder that it did not perish at once, like others of its kind which never blossoming were torn from the bed that nourished them and borne afar like balls of thistledown. How and why it survived the rest, which seemed more feasible, I am not able to answer fully or satisfactorily to myself, and other people have yet to show any curiosity about it.
How at this period I watched for the postman! Envelopes of portentous bulk were put into my hands so often that I became inured to disappointment, unsurprised and unhurt, like a patient father who has more faith in the abilities of his children than the stupid and purblind world which will not employ them.