I laughed at this but let him alone. He tried and tried very hard
for a long while, but I need hardly say was unsuccessful. The older
I grow, the more convinced I become of the folly and credulity of
the public; but at the same time the harder do I see it is to impose
oneself upon that folly and credulity.
He tried editor after editor with article after article. Sometimes
an editor listened to him and told him to leave his articles; he
almost invariably, however, had them returned to him in the end with a
polite note saying that they were not suited for the particular
paper to which he had sent them. And yet many of these very articles
appeared in his later works, and no one complained of them, not at
least on the score of bad literary workmanship. "I see," he said to me
one day, "that demand is very imperious, and supply must be very
suppliant."
Once, indeed, the editor of an important monthly magazine accepted
an article from him, and he thought he had now got a footing in the
literary world. The article was to appear in the next issue but one,
and he was to receive proof from the printers in about ten days or a
fortnight; but week after week passed and there was no proof; month
after month went by and there was still no room for Ernest's
article; at length after about six months the editor one morning
told him that he had filled every number of his review for the next
ten months, but that his article should definitely appear.
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