1 50 EC 11 K T M K M O it A N D CMS. 



inserting, surely it was worth paying for? But now, upon slipping 

 into the bottom of my note to the editor that " the writer would be 

 happy to receive the usual terms of emolument/' paper after paper 

 was politely declined, without my being able to conjecture what the 

 devil was the occasion of it ? I read and re-read the rejected articles, 

 and sometimes I fancied I saw what was amiss in them, and very 

 often I did not. I tried them elsewhere in their most corrected 

 state : but no, it would not do ; the result was always the same. 



The important truth gradually broke upon me. The fault was 

 not in my articles ; nor was there, perhaps, any fault in the editor 

 it was the mutual misfortune of a want of money. An article might 

 be a very good one to insert ; but it might not at all suit the arrange- 

 ments of the magazine to pay for it. Seeing things to be in this state, 

 and having already wasted so much time in my efforts to become a 

 contributor, I now made a staunch resolve to accomplish my end by 

 acting practically upon an elaborate calculation of chances. In pur- 

 suance of this, I noted down the titles of nine periodicals, whose cir- 

 culation was the most extensive, and whose funds were consequently 

 in the best condition ; and I then wrote nine articles on subjects as 

 varied as possible, in my very best style. A scientific and patient 

 use of these would put me in possession of eighty-one chances. So 

 I got a little tally-book, and writing down the titles of the nine 

 periodicals each on a separate page, with the^tles of my nine articles 

 under every one of them, I carefully crossed out the articles as they 

 were successively rejected, and by these means avoided sending the 

 same one a second time to the same periodical. After ringing the 

 changes in this manner with the most exemplary fortitude during 

 about a year and a half, (for I often had to wait some time before I 

 had my papers returned, besides having to transcribe such as were 

 worn out with service), one of my papers took root, and at the seventy- 

 fourth chance I received five guineas for the insertion of half a sheet. 

 The paper was entitled " The Man of many Sorrows." It was a story 

 about an old bachelor in Germany, who dreamt every night that he 

 was married to a couple of wives. It appeared in the New Twaddler, 

 March 1st. * 



Now was " the winter of my discontent made glorious summer !" 

 I wrote other articles and handled them in the same persevering 

 manner, till I gradually became a " regular paid contributor 1 " What 

 ill luck could resist a man who entered the field with eighty-one 

 chances ? From that hour eighty-one became as the graven image 

 of my destiny ! the number of my astrological house ; my seal 

 held up on high ; my panacea against disaster ; my battering ram ! 

 my armed host, before whose complex powers the difficulties that 

 beset all life, especially a literary one, were compelled to succumb ; 

 penetrated on all sides, exhausted, worn out, and even glad to give 

 in, rather than be at the incessant pains of knocking down a man who 



could get up again eighty-one times ! 



******* 



I understand your hint about posterity. It is a thought which 

 has given me considerable pain at different periods of my life. That 

 a man should devote so many years to literature, and yet never 



