“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Florence, who was the only other person in the room. “Whom is it from, and to whom is it addressed, please?”
“Why, to Elsie, of course. Look there!”
She pointed to the name of a well-known periodical, printed in an upper corner of the envelope.
“He’s been trying to get something into that for these six months past, and nothin’s ever come back but those old circulars, telling how the editor’s feelin’ so bad, because the piece is a leetle bit too long, or not quite suited, or better for some other magazine! Poor boy, he’d got so discouraged and put down ’bout it that I didn’t know but he’d give up for good.”
“Then that’s why he writes so much. Oh, but are you sure he wouldn’t mind your telling me?”
“Bless you, no; he don’t make no secret of it. He got into the way of writin’ for the papers while he was schoolin’ at Bowdoin, and when he came home he just made up his mind that that was his callin’, and that he would stick to farmin’ for a while until he got money enough to move to the city, where he could get at more books. About six weeks ago he sent a great thick bunch o’ paper—I’m sure I don’t know what ’t was all about—to the magazine, and, as I told ye, they’ve sent back this envelope instead of the bunch. So I know it’s taken.”
’Lisbeth’s kind face fairly beamed as she spoke, and her eyes were moist. “If you’d known,” she went on, wiping them with the corner of her apron, “the setbacks that boy’s had, and the big pack of them old printed things he’s got saved up—he’s the most perseverin’ critter—There! here ’m I standin’ talkin’, instead of givin’ the letter to him this minute!” She ran up-stairs in her quick, nervous way, and, as they all sat round the uneven table that night, the light in the young man’s eyes showed that ’Lisbeth had not mistaken the contents of the mail.
“I’m trying to do my duty on the farm,” he told Florence afterward, “and at the same time to find whether I really have a message to the world, or a part of it, however small. I always have to remember the reply of the old Scotch minister who was asked by an anxious young pulpit aspirant whether he thought he had a call to preach. ‘Try it, mon,’ he said; ‘try it, an’ dootless ye’ll succeed, gin ye find oot ’at onybody has a ca’ to hear ye.’ I shouldn’t want to be ‘stickit,’” he added, smiling.
“But—pardon me, Mr. Wesley—what kind of writing do you mean to do? There are so many branches, you know: poetry, fiction, history, essays”—