pers will find you out, as the school-boys find out where the
ripe apples and pears are. Produce anything really good, and an
intelligent editor will jump at it. Don't flatter yourself that
any article of yours is rejected because you are unknown to fame.
Nothing pleases an editor more than to get anything worth having
from a new hand. There is always a dearth of really fine articles
for a first-rate journal; for, of a hundred pieces received, ninety
are at or below the sea-level; some have water enough, but no head;
some head enough, but no water; only two or three are from full
reservoirs, high up that hill which is so hard to climb.

You may have genius. The contrary is of course probable, but it is
not demonstrated. If you have, the world wants you more than you
want it. It has not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark
of genius that shows itself among us; there is not a bull-calf in
our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one,
among his friends, and no takers, that he is the real, genuine,
no-mistake Osiris.

Qu'est ce qu'il a fait? What has he done? That was Napoleon's
test. What have you done? Turn up the faces of your picture-
cards, my boy! You need not make mouths at the public because it
has not accepted you at your own fancy-valuation. Do the prettiest
thing you can and wait your time.

For the verses you send me, I will not say they are hopeless, and I
dare not affirm that they show promise. I am not an editor, but I
know the standard of some editors. You must not expect to "leap
with a single bound" into the society of those whom it is not
flattery to call your betters. When "The Pactolian" has paid you
for a copy of verses,--(I can furnish you a list of alliterative
signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe
Zenith,)--when "The Rag-bag" has stolen your piece, after carefully
scratching your name out,--when "The Nut-cracker" has thought you
worth shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem,
--then, and not till then, you may consider the presumption against
you, from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in question,
and let our friends hear from you, if you think it worth while.
You may possibly think me too candid, and even accuse me of
incivility; but let me assure you that I am not half so
plain-spoken as Nature, nor half so rude as Time. If you prefer the
long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendshi