me off. Once by appointment I passed an hour in your office
pleasantly and profitably and even so tardily do I acknowledge your
courtesy and good-nature. But a beggar must choose his streets carefully
and must not be seen too often in a neighborhood as the same door does not
always offer pie. So this time your brass knocker shows no finger-marks of
mine.

You did not accept for publication the last paper I sent to you. (You
spread an infinite deal of sorrow in your path.) On its return I re-read
it and now confess to concurrence with your judgment. Something had gone
wrong. It was not as intended. Unlike Cleopatra, age had withered it. Was
I not like a cook whose dinner has been sent back untasted? The best
available ingredients were put into that confection and if it did not
issue from the oven with those savory whiffs that compel appetite, my
stove is at fault. Perhaps some good old literary housewife will tell me,
disconsolate among my pots and pans, how long an idea must be boiled to be
tender and how best to garnish a thought to an editor's taste? And yet,
sir, your manners are excellent. It was Petruchio who cried:

What's this? Mutton?--
'Tis burnt; and so is all the meat.
Where is the rascal cook?

Manners have improved. In pleasant contrast is your courteous note,
signifying the excellence of my proffered pastry, your delight that you
are allowed to sniff and your regret for lack of appetite and abdominal
capacity. Nevertheless, the food came back and I poked at the broken
pieces mournfully. It is a witch's business presiding at the caldron of
these things and there is no magic pottage above my fire.

And yet, kind sir, with your permission I shall continue in my ways and
offer to you from time to time such messes as I have, hoping that some day
your taste will deteriorate to my level or that I shall myself learn the
witchcraft and enter your regard.

Up to this present time only a few of my papers have been asked to stay.
The rest have gone the downward tread of your stair carpet and have passed
into the night. My desk has become a kind of mausoleum of such as have
come home to die, and when I raise its lid a silence falls on me as on one
who visits sacred places.

There is, however, another side of this. Certain it is that thousands of
us who write seek your recognition and regard. Certain it is that your
favorable judgment moves us to elation, and your silence to our merits
urges