an editor), I read the "literary"
galley proofs; "made up" once a week down in the composing room late at
night; compiled the feature variously called in different papers _Books
Received_, _Books of the Week_, or _The Newest Books_; and got out the
correspondence of the literary department--with publishers and with
fools who write in about things. I also went over the foreign
exchange, that is: clipped literary notes out of foreign papers. Once
a month I surveyed the current magazines. I worked in the office on
every holiday of the year except Christmas and New Year's, and
frequently on Sundays at home.

With a view to attracting the intellectual elite to a profession where
this class is needed, I will tell you what I got for this. It should
be understood, however, that I was with one of the great papers, which
paid a scale of generous salaries. Mine was forty dollars a week.
That is a good deal of money for a literary man to earn regularly.
But--

I did, indeed, have an assistant in this office; there was a person
associated with me who took the responsibility of everything in the
department that was excellent. That is, I was "assistant literary
editor." Few newspapers can afford to employ a chief solely for each
department. It is recognised that the work of the literary editor can
be economically combined with that of the dramatic editor, or with that
of the art critic; or the art critic runs the Saturday supplement, or
some such thing. My chief looked in every day or so, and frequently,
perhaps in striving for exact honesty I should say regularly,
contributed reviews. He directed the policy of the department,
subject, of course, to criticism from "down stairs."

But (as I was about to say above) that regular income is very
uncertain. Universities cultivate a sense of security in their
professors, in order to obtain loyal service and lofty endeavour. The
editorial tenure, as all men know, is a house of sand--a summer's
breeze, a wash of the tide, and the editor is a refugee. I know the
editor of literary pages that go far and wide, who has held down that
job now for over a year. That man is troubled: none has ever stood in
his shoes for much longer than that.

"Don't fool yourself," I heard a successful young journalist say the
other day to a very conscientious young reviewer. "Good work won't get
you anything. Play politics, office politics all the while."
Doubtless sound advice, this, for any g