THE HAPPY VALLEY 461 



we learned something. I blue-pencilled my own 

 manuscripts freely and thus saved the editor a 

 lot of trouble, while the camera man sent in fewer 

 but more carefully selected illustrations. He 

 mounted these on heavy cardboard as effectively 

 as possible with appropriate captions taken from 

 the manuscript. The result was a heavy package 

 calling for a lot of stamps for transmission and 

 return. This w r as not altogether an evil for I 

 suspect that many of our offerings were accepted 

 because the editor couldn't make up his mind to 

 let so many stamps get away. Team work gave 

 us a double chance. If the illustrations happened 

 to strike the art editor favorably he bullied the 

 literary man into O.K.-ing the manuscript, and 

 I have even known a kindly editor to persuade 

 his associate to accept illustrations which the 

 camera man had assured me were too bum to send 

 out. 



Sometimes we think we know a lot about 

 editors and magazines and then w T e know that 

 we don't. One magazine never changes even a 

 comma in the copy. Another waits till the page 



