You may have vaguely heard, at some period of your life, of the mean, petty jealousies that befoul the clear current of journalism, and frown down new and aspiring talent, however promising, and you may have indignantly refused to believe such statements. Alas! now shall you feel the full force of their truth in your own person.
You look for your poem blindly, confusedly—amazed, bewildered, disgusted! You turn that paper inside out, upside down; you search in the Parliamentary debates, in the Money Market, in the Births, Deaths, and Marriages, in the advertisements—everywhere. No sign of it!
With your heart in your boots you turn to the “Answers to Correspondents,” there to find your nom-de-plume heading some scurrilous inanity from the editorial chair, of one or other of the following patterns:—
“Homer—Don’t try again!”
“Homer—Sweet seventeen. So young, so innocent. Hence we spare you.”
“Homer—Have you no friends to look after you?”
“Homer—Do you really expect us to ruin this paper?”
“Homer—Send it to the Telegraph man. We have a grudge against him?”
“Homer—The 71st Ode to Spring this year! And yet we live.”
While it would be quite natural to indulge in any number of “cuss” words, your best plan will be to veil your wrath, and, refraining from smashing the editorial windows, write the editor a studiously polite letter, asking him to be good enough to point out for your benefit any errors or defects in the poem submitted to him. This will fairly corner him, and he will probably be driven to disclose his meanness in the next issue:—