t he would
like to be an assistant editor of a magazine. But he found editors of
magazines anxious to employ new and untried assistants, especially
in June, were very few. On the contrary, they explained they were
retrenching and cutting down expenses--they meant they had discharged
all office boys who received more than three dollars a week. They
further "retrenched," by taking a mean advantage of Carter's having
called upon them in person, by handing him three or four of his
stories--but by this he saved his postage-stamps.

Each day, when he returned to the flat, Dolly, who always expected each
editor would hastily dust off his chair and offer it to her brilliant
husband, would smile excitedly and gasp, "Well?" and Carter would throw
the rejected manuscripts on the table and say: "At least, I have not
returned empty-handed." Then they would discover a magazine that neither
they nor any one else knew existed, and they would hurriedly readdress
the manuscripts to that periodical, and run to post them at the
letter-box on the corner.

"Any one of them, if ACCEPTED," Carter would point out, "might bring us
in twenty-five dollars. A story of mine once sold for forty; so to-night
we can afford to dine at a restaurant where wine is NOT 'included.'"

Fortunately, they never lost their sense of humor. Otherwise the narrow
confines of the flat, the evil smells that rose from the baked
streets, the greasy food of Italian and Hungarian restaurants, and the
ever-haunting need of money might have crushed their youthful spirits.
But in time even they found that one, still less two, cannot
exist exclusively on love and the power to see the bright side of
things--especially when there is no bright side. They had come to the
point where they must borrow money from their friends, and that, though
there were many who would have opened their safes to them, they had
agreed was the one thing they would not do, or they must starve. The
alternative was equally distasteful.

Carter had struggled earnestly to find a job. But his inexperience and
the season of the year were against him. No newspaper wanted a dramatic
critic when the only shows in town had been running three months, and
on roof gardens; nor did they want a "cub" reporter when veterans were
being "laid off" by the dozens. Nor were his services desired as a
private secretary, a taxicab driver, an agent to sell real estate
or automobiles or stocks. As no one gave him a chance t