d for, and then you can go about denouncing the whole
profession as a congregation of robbers and clerks of St. Nicholas.

The ways of failure are infinite, and of course are not nearly exhausted.
One good plan is never to be yourself when you write, to put in nothing
of your own temperament, manner, character--or to have none, which does
as well. Another favourite method is to offer the wrong kind of article,
to send to the _Cornhill_ an essay on the evolution of the Hittite
syllabary, (for only one author could make _that_ popular;) or a sketch
of cock fighting among the ancients to the _Monthly Record_; or an essay
on _Ayahs in India_ to an American magazine; or a biography of Washington
or Lincoln to any English magazine whatever. We have them every month in
some American periodicals, and our poor insular serials can get on
without them: "have no use for them."

It is a minor, though valuable scheme, to send poems on Christmas to
magazines about the beginning of December, because, in fact, the editors
have laid in their stock of that kind of thing earlier. Always insist on
_seeing_ an editor, instead of writing to him. There is nothing he hates
so much, unless you are very young and beautiful indeed, when, perhaps,
if you wish to fail you had better _not_ pay him a visit at the office.
Even if you do, even if you were as fair as the Golden Helen, he is not
likely to put in your compositions if, as is probable, they fall _much_
below the level of his magazine.

A good way of making yourself a dead failure is to go about accusing
successful people of plagiarising from books or articles of yours which
did not succeed, and, perhaps, were never published at all. By
encouraging this kind of vanity and spite you may entirely destroy any
small powers you once happened to possess, you will, besides, become a
person with a grievance, and, in the long run, will be shunned even by
your fellow failures. Again, you may plagiarise yourself, if you can, it
is not easy, but it is a safe way to fail if you can manage it. No
successful person, perhaps, was ever, in the strict sense, a plagiarist,
though charges of plagiary are always brought against everybody, from
Virgil to Milton, from Scott to Moliere, who attains success. When you
are accused of being a plagiarist, and shewn up in double columns, you
may be pretty sure that all this counsel has been wasted on you, and that
you have failed to fail, after all. Otherwise no