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Show WHY HE WENT INTO BUSINESS. Unusual Experience of a Man Who Set Out to Be a Literary Person. "I had hopes once myself of making fame and fortune by my pen," said a substantial, middle-aged citizen who is now drawing $40,000 or $50,000 a year out of a prosperous business, "but somehow I couldn't make 'em come' my way. "I wrote and wrote and wrote things, and sent my pieces around in all directions, direc-tions, but it was no use. They all came back. Everybody was overcrowded, overcrowd-ed, or what I sent wasn't just what they wanted, or something or other every time. And so my prospects in the literary line looked pretty dim, and I was beginning to think I'd have to take up some other pursuit when out came a new periodical that was to make a specialty of just the sort of stuff that I felt I could turn out. Now, I said to myself, now, old sport, your time has come at last. All this previous previ-ous experience that you've been having, hav-ing, sad as it may have seemed, you can now utterly forget, for here is where you get your reward. "And I prepared a piece that I thought must hit these new folks, and hit 'em hard, and sent it in. The time had come when my light was to shine out on a hill. "But the very next day, so prompt was its return, I got from the new concern a thick envelope back. I knew well enough without opening it what it was. It was my manuscript back, and so it proved to be. Wasn't that a crusher? It was, indeed. Here where my hopes had really been highest, they had been the quickest confounded. The details of it didn't interest me much, but still I looked at the printed slip accompanying the manuscript, wondering wonder-ing a little if in making up the form of declination they had hit on anything new, and looking so I got at a glance the shock of a happy surprise. My manuscript had. not been, rejected, but the new periodical had suspende.d pub-. Iication and-my manuscript was returned, re-turned, as I was politely informed, without having been read atall. |