University of Virginia Library

I was not quite eighteen years old when I made my entrance into New York City. I had a letter from Mr. S———, editor of Frank Leslie's Magazine. Instead of the usual printed rejection slip, Mr. S——— had written me a quarter page letter, in which he expressed an interest in my work and suggested that I should let his magazine see whatever else I had written besides the short story “regretfully returned.”

Upon my arrival in New York City, I did not wait to secure lodgings, but went straight from the train, bag in hand, to the Frank Leslie office. Having explained to the editor who I was—it was plain he had forgotten that letter he had written me—I said:

“—and you wrote me to let you see anything else I have written, and so—”

I opened my bag. He leaped to his feet, threw up his hands, and shouted at the top of his voice:

“Help! Help!”

In rushed half-a-dozen clerks and editors, and the wild looking Mr. S——— pointed dramatically to that bag of mine, which was brim full to the top with manuscripts.

With a vague idea that I was about to be arrested for some crime or another, I burst into tears. I bawled as hard and heartily as only a husky youngster can, with the result that that outrageous mirth was silenced, and Mr. S———, alternately wringing his hands and running them through his hair, implored me to stop weeping. He said:

“Now don't cry! Don't cry, I say! Don't cry! For heaven's sakes, don't cry! Stop it, I say! I'll buy a story from you—it's all right. There, there now—stop crying. Shut up, do!”

In later years, Mr. S——— and I occasionally met, and he never failed to recall that amusing episode, and he told his friends that I had blackmailed him into buying my first story from me with tears.

Whatever I lacked in talent, I made up in pertinacity. I was determined, by hook or crook, by fair means or foul, to get my stories and poems read and published. When driven by extreme necessity, however, I was forced to seek employment. I would take a temporary position in an office, and hold the position until such time as a story would be sold, and I was again in funds. One such position I obtained in the office of the K——— Publishing Company, and before I had been there a week, by a fortunate, or unfortunate, coincidence, I was elevated to the position of private secretary to Mr. K———, the president. He was a big, lanky, sandy-haired man, with large freckles on his nose. He reminded me a bit of Bob Fitzsimmons, with whom I once had shaken hands when in Chicago, a crushing experience I never forgot.