Though they may not work, on the average, as long hours as the business
man, they toil far harder, and usually with few of the interruptions and
relaxations from the job that the business man is allowed. Four or five
hours of intense application a day stands for a great deal more
expenditure of energy and thought than eight or nine hours broken up
with periods when one's feet are literally or metaphorically on the desk
and genial conversation is flowing. Most of the men and women who make a
living out of free lancing earn every blessed cent of it; and the amount
upon which they pay an income tax is, as a rule, proportioned rather
justly to the amount of concentrated labor that they pour into the
hopper of the copy mill.

You who happen to have seen a successful free lance knock off work in
mid-afternoon to play tennis, or to skim away toward the country club in
his new motor car are too likely to exclaim that "his is the existence!"
Forgetting, of course, the lonesome hours of more or less baffling
effort that he spent that day upon a manuscript before he locked up his
workshop. And the years he spent in drudgery, the bales of rejection
slips he collected, the times that he had to pawn his watch and stick
pin to buy a dinner or to pay the rent of a hall bedroom.

Young Gentlemen Who Propose to Embrace the Career of Art might be
shocked to learn--though it would be all for their own good--that a
great many writers who are generally regarded with envy for their "luck"
take the pains to follow the market notes in the Authors' League
_Bulletin_, the _Bookman_ and the _Editor Magazine_ with all the care
of a contractor studying the latest news of building operations. Not
only do these writers read the trade papers of their calling; they also,
with considerable care, study the magazines to which they sell--or hope
to sell--manuscripts. They do not nearly so often as the novice make the
_faux pas_ of offering an editor exactly the same sort of material that
he already has printed in a recent or a current issue. They follow the
new books. They keep card indexes on their unmarketed manuscripts, and
toil on as much irksome office routine as a stock broker. A surprisingly
large number of the "arrived" do not even hold themselves above keeping
note books, or producing, chiefly for the beneficial exercise of it,
essays, journals, descriptions, verse and fiction not meant to be
offered for sale--solely copybook exercises, produced f