what it
was, a machine. He poured his soul into stories, articles, and poems,
and intrusted them to the machine. He folded them just so, put the
proper stamps inside the long envelope along with the manuscript, sealed
the envelope, put more stamps outside, and dropped it into the mail-box.
It travelled across the continent, and after a certain lapse of time the
postman returned him the manuscript in another long envelope, on the
outside of which were the stamps he had enclosed. There was no human
editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that
changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the
stamps. It was like the slot machines wherein one dropped pennies, and,
with a metallic whirl of machinery had delivered to him a stick of
chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate. It depended upon which slot one
dropped the penny in, whether he got chocolate or gum. And so with the
editorial machine. One slot brought checks and the other brought
rejection slips. So far he had found only the latter slot.

It was the rejection slips that completed the horrible machinelikeness of
the process. These slips were printed in stereotyped forms and he had
received hundreds of them--as many as a dozen or more on each of his
earlier manuscripts. If he had received one line, one personal line,
along with one rejection of all his rejections, he would have been
cheered. But not one editor had given that proof of existence. And he
could conclude only that there were no warm human men at the other end,
only mere cogs, well oiled and running beautifully in the machine.

He was a good fighter, whole-souled and stubborn, and he would have been
content to continue feeding the machine for years; but he was bleeding to
death, and not years but weeks would determine the fight. Each week his
board bill brought him nearer destruction, while the postage on forty
manuscripts bled him almost as severely. He no longer bought books, and
he economized in petty ways and sought to delay the inevitable end;
though he did not know how to economize, and brought the end nearer by a
week when he gave his sister Marian five dollars for a dress.

He struggled in the dark, without advice, without encouragement, and in
the teeth of discouragement. Even Gertrude was beginning to look
askance. At first she had tolerated with sisterly fondness what she
conceived to be his foolishness; but now, out of sisterly solicitude, s