ts. Anybody but a
genius or one of fortune's darlings may expect that New York, which has
a deep and natural distrust of strangers, will require that the newcomer
earn his bread in blood-sweat until he has established a reputation for
producing the goods. Dear old simple-hearted Father Knickerbocker has
been gold-bricked so often that a breezy, friendly manner puts him
immediately on his guard.

Most of the editors with whom you will have to deal are home folks, like
yourself, from Oskaloosa and Richmond and Santa Barbara and Quincy. Few
are native-born New Yorkers, and scarcely any of them go around with
their noses in the air in an "upstage Eastern manner." Most of them are
graduates of the newspaper school, and remnants of newspaper cynicism
occasionally appear in their outspoken philosophy. But be not deceived
by this, for even in the newspaper office the half-baked cub who is
getting his first glimpses of woman's frailties and man's weak will is
the only cynic who means all he says. All reporters who are worth their
salt mellow with the years; and editors who amount to much usually are
ex-reporters trained to their jobs by long experience. The biggest
editors and the ones with the biggest hearts have the biggest jobs. Most
of the snubs you will receive will come from little men in little jobs,
trying to impress you with a "front." The biggest editors of the lot are
plain home folks whom you would not hesitate to invite to a dinner in a
farmhouse kitchen.

What you ought to know when you invade New York without much capital and
no reputation to speak of is that you are making a great mistake to move
there so early, and that most of the editors to whom you address
yourself know you are making a mistake but are too soft-hearted to tell
you so.

Like most other over-optimistic free lances, we invaded New York with an
expeditionary force which was in a woeful state of unpreparedness.

In a street of brownstone fronts in mid-town Manhattan, a hurdy-gurdy
strummed a welcome to us in the golden November sunlight, and a canary
in a gilt cage twittered ecstatically from an open window. This moment
is worthy of mention because it was the happiest that was granted to us
for a number of months thereafter. We rented a small furnished room, top
floor rear, and went out for a stroll on Broadway, looking the city over
with the appraising eyes of conquerors. We were joyously confident.

One reason why we thought we would do wel