ad thought over this whole situation while she removed the
wrappings from the first manuscript of the pile upon her desk. Even then
her fingers itched for the pen, and the sentences and phrases of the
opening defined themselves clearly in her mind. But that was not to be
the immediate work. The unlovely bread-and-butter business pressed upon
her. With a long breath she put the vision from her and turned her
attention to the task at hand.

After her custom, she went through the pile, glancing at the titles and
first lines of each manuscript, and putting it aside in the desk corner
to be considered in detail later on.

She almost knew in advance that of the thirty-odd volunteers of that
day's batch not one would prove available. The manuscripts were tagged
and numbered in the business office before they came to her, and the
number of the first she picked up that morning was 1120, and this since
the first of the year. Of the eleven hundred she had accepted only
three. Of these three, two had failed entirely after publication; the
third had barely paid expenses. What a record! How hopeless it seemed!
Yet the strugglers persisted. Did it not seem as if No. 1120, Mrs. Allen
Bowen of Bentonville, South Dakota--did it not seem as if she could know
that the great American public has no interest in, no use for, "Thoughts
on the Higher Life," a series of articles written for the county
paper--foolish little articles revamped from Ruskin and Matthew Arnold?

And 1121--what was this? The initial lines ran: "'Oh, damn everything!'
exclaimed Percival Holcombe, as he dropped languidly into a deep-seated
leather chair by the club window which commanded a view of the noisy
street crowded with fashion and frivolity, wherein the afternoon's sun,
freed from its enthralling mists, which all day long had jealously
obscured his beams, was gloating o'er the panels of the carriages of
noblemen who were returning from race-track and park, and the towhead of
the little sweeper who plied his humble trade which earned his scanty
supper that he ate miles away from that gay quarter wherein Percival
Holcombe, who----" Rosella paused for sheer breath. This sort did not
need to be read. It was declined already. She picked up the next. It was
in an underwear-box of green pasteboard.

"The staid old town of Salem," it read, "was all astir one bright and
sunny morning in the year 1604." Rosella groaned. "Another!" she said.
"Now," she continued, speaking