| Two Five-Cent Libraries at $40 | $ 80. | 00 |
| Four magazine sketches at $10 | 40. | 00 |
| One magazine sketch | 6. | 16 |
| "A Girl from the Backwoods," | 300. | |
| ———— | ||
| Total | $426. | 16 |
Perhaps, after all, this was not doing so badly; for during this year, and the year immediately following, Edwards was to discover that he had had one foot in the grave. But his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. With 1898 they were to begin taking an upward turn.
Some one said that some one else, by using Ignatius Donnelly's cryptogram, proved that the late Bill Nye wrote the Shakespeare plays. This, of course, is merely a reflection on the cryptogram; BUT if Shakespeare's publishers had not been so slovenly with that folio edition of his plays, there would never have been any hunt for a cipher, nor any of this Bacon talk.
"In the early days, when I lived on the plains of Western Kansas on a homestead," says John H. Whitson, well and favorably known to dozens of editors, "I was nosed out by a correspondent for a Kansas City paper, who thought there was something bizarre in the fact that an author was living the simple life of a Western Settler. The purported interview he published was wonderful concoction! He gave a descriptive picture of the dug-out in which I lived, and filled in the gaps with other matter drawn from his imagination, making me out a sort of literary troglodyte; whereas, as a matter of fact, I had never lived in a dug-out. On top of it, one of my homesteading friends asked me in all seriousness how much I had paid to get that write-up and picture in the Kansas City paper, and seemed to think I was doing some tall lying when I said I had paid nothing."
FOOTNOTES:
[E] This magazine, by the way, which had an humble beginning, has grown into one of the high class "populars" and has a wide circulation.
[F] Telegram sent on same day letter was received saying story was satisfactory.
[XI]
WHEN FICTION IS
STRANGER THAN TRUTH.