considered unsolicited articles, and that most of their contents
were written upon order by well-known specialists who were authorities in
their various fields.

CHAPTER XXIX

It was a hard summer for Martin. Manuscript readers and editors were
away on vacation, and publications that ordinarily returned a decision in
three weeks now retained his manuscript for three months or more. The
consolation he drew from it was that a saving in postage was effected by
the deadlock. Only the robber-publications seemed to remain actively in
business, and to them Martin disposed of all his early efforts, such as
"Pearl-diving," "The Sea as a Career," "Turtle-catching," and "The
Northeast Trades." For these manuscripts he never received a penny. It
is true, after six months' correspondence, he effected a compromise,
whereby he received a safety razor for "Turtle-catching," and that The
Acropolis, having agreed to give him five dollars cash and five yearly
subscriptions: for "The Northeast Trades," fulfilled the second part of
the agreement.

For a sonnet on Stevenson he managed to wring two dollars out of a Boston
editor who was running a magazine with a Matthew Arnold taste and a penny-
dreadful purse. "The Peri and the Pearl," a clever skit of a poem of two
hundred lines, just finished, white hot from his brain, won the heart of
the editor of a San Francisco magazine published in the interest of a
great railroad. When the editor wrote, offering him payment in
transportation, Martin wrote back to inquire if the transportation was
transferable. It was not, and so, being prevented from peddling it, he
asked for the return of the poem. Back it came, with the editor's
regrets, and Martin sent it to San Francisco again, this time to The
Hornet, a pretentious monthly that had been fanned into a constellation
of the first magnitude by the brilliant journalist who founded it. But
The Hornet's light had begun to dim long before Martin was born. The
editor promised Martin fifteen dollars for the poem, but, when it was
published, seemed to forget about it. Several of his letters being
ignored, Martin indicted an angry one which drew a reply. It was written
by a new editor, who coolly informed Martin that he declined to be held
responsible for the old editor's mistakes, and that he did not think much
of "The Peri and the Pearl" anyway.

But The Globe, a Chicago magazine, gave Martin the most cruel treatment
of all. He h