Project Gutenberg's The Log of The "Jolly Polly", by Richard Harding Davis

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Title: The Log of The "Jolly Polly"

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Posting Date: October 10, 2008 [EBook #1808]
Release Date: May, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Aaron Cannon

THE LOG OF THE "JOLLY POLLY"

By Richard Harding Davis

Temptation came to me when I was in the worst possible position to
resist it.

It is a way temptation has. Whenever I swear off drinking invariably I
am invited to an ushers' dinner. Whenever I am rich, only the highbrow
publications that pay the least, want my work. But the moment I am
poverty-stricken the MANICURE GIRL'S MAGAZINE and the ROT AND SPOT
WEEKLY spring at me with offers of a dollar a word. Temptation always is
on the job. When I am down and out temptation always is up and at me.

When first the Farrells tempted me my vogue had departed. On my name and
"past performances" I could still dispose of what I wrote, but only to
magazines that were just starting. The others knew I no longer was
a best-seller. All the real editors knew it. So did the theatrical
managers.

My books and plays had flourished in the dark age of the
historical-romantic novel. My heroes wore gauntlets and long swords.
They fought for the Cardinal or the King, and each loved a high-born
demoiselle who was a ward of the King or the Cardinal, and with feminine
perversity, always of whichever one her young man was fighting. With
people who had never read Guizot's "History of France," my books were
popular, and for me made a great deal of money. This was fortunate, for
my parents had left me nothing save expensive tastes. When the tastes
became habits, the public left me. It turned to white-slave and crook
plays, and to novels true to life; so true to life that one felt the
author must at one time have been a masseur in a Turkish bath.

So, my heroines in black velvet, and my heroes with long swords were
"scrapped." As one book reviewer put it, "To expect the public of to-day
to read the novels of Fletcher Farrell is like asking people to give u