Chapter XXVIII

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　But success had lost Martin's address, and her messengers no longercame to his door. For twenty-five days, working Sundays andholidays, he toiled on "The Shame of the Sun," a long essay of somethirty thousand words. It was a deliberate attack on the mysticismof the Maeterlinck school - an attack from the citadel of positivescience upon the wonder-dreamers, but an attack nevertheless thatretained much of beauty and wonder of the sort compatible withascertained fact. It was a little later that he followed up theattack with two short essays, "The Wonder-Dreamers" and "TheYardstick of the Ego." And on essays, long and short, he began topay the travelling expenses from magazine to magazine.During the twenty-five days spent on "The Shame of the Sun," hesold hack-work to the extent of six dollars and fifty cents. Ajoke had brought in fifty cents, and a second one, sold to a high-grade comic weekly, had fetched a dollar. Then two humorous poemshad earned two dollars and three dollars respectively. As aresult, having exhausted his credit with the tradesmen (though hehad increased his credit with the grocer to five dollars), hiswheel and suit of clothes went back to the pawnbroker. The type-writer people were again clamoring for money, insistently pointingout that according to the agreement rent was to be paid strictly inadvance.Encouraged by his several small sales, Martin went back to hack-work. Perhaps there was a living in it, after all. Stored awayunder his table were the twenty storiettes which had been rejectedby the newspaper short-story syndicate. He read them over in orderto find out how not to write newspaper storiettes, and so doing,reasoned out the perfect formula. He found that the newspaperstoriette should never be tragic, should never end unhappily, andshould never contain beauty of language, subtlety of thought, norreal delicacy of sentiment. Sentiment it must contain, plenty ofit, pure and noble, of the sort that in his own early youth hadbrought his applause from "nigger heaven" - the "For-God-my-country-and-the-Czar" and "I-may-be-poor-but-I-am-honest" brand ofsentiment.Having learned such precautions, Martin consulted "The Duchess" fortone, and proceeded to mix according to formula. The formulaconsists of three parts: (1) a pair of lovers are jarred apart;(2) by some deed or event they are reunited; (3) marriage bells.The third part was an unvarying quantity, but the first and secondparts could be varied an infinite number of times. Thus, the pairof lovers could be jarred apart by misunderstood motives, byaccident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate parents, by craftyguardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so forth; theycould be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a similardeed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or theother, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative,or jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by discovery ofsome unguessed secret, by lover storming girl's heart, by lovermaking long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly. It wasvery fetching to make the girl propose in the course of beingreunited, and Martin discovered, bit by bit, other decidedlypiquant and fetching ruses. But marriage bells at the end was theone thing he could take no liberties with; though the heavensrolled up as a scroll and the stars fell, the wedding bells must goon ringing just the same. In quantity, the formula prescribedtwelve hundred words minimum dose, fifteen hundred words maximumdose.Before he got very far along in the art of the storiette, Martinworked out half a dozen stock forms, which he always consulted whenconstructing storiettes. These forms were like the cunning tablesused by mathematicians, which may be entered from top, bottom,right, and left, which entrances consist of scores of lines anddozens of columns, and from which may be drawn, without reasoningor thinking, thousands of different conclusions, all unchallengablyprecise and true. Thus, in the course of half an hour with hisforms, Martin could frame up a dozen or so storiettes, which he putaside and filled in at his convenience. He found that he couldfill one in, after a day of serious work, in the hour before goingto bed. As he later confessed to Ruth, he could almost do it inhis sleep. The real work was in constructing the frames, and thatwas merely mechanical.He had no doubt whatever of the efficacy of his formula, and foronce he knew the editorial mind when he said positively to himselfthat the first two he sent off would bring checks. And checks theybrought, for four dollars each, at the end of twelve days.In the meantime he was making fresh and alarming discoveriesconcerning the magazines. Though the Transcontinental hadpublished "The Ring of Bells," no check was forthcoming. Martinneeded it, and he wrote for it. An evasive answer and a requestfor more of his work was all he received. He had gone hungry twodays waiting for the reply, and it was then that he put his wheelback in pawn. He wrote regularly, twice a week, to theTranscontinental for his five dollars, though it was only semi-occasionally that he elicited a reply. He did not know that theTranscontinental had been staggering along precariously for years,that it was a fourth-rater, or tenth-rater, without standing, witha crazy circulation that partly rested on petty bullying and partlyon patriotic appealing, and with advertisements that were scarcelymore than charitable donations. Nor did he know that theTranscontinental was the sole livelihood of the editor and thebusiness manager, and that they could wring their livelihood out ofit only by moving to escape paying rent and by never paying anybill they could evade. Nor could he have guessed that theparticular five dollars that belonged to him had been appropriatedby the business manager for the painting of his house in Alameda,which painting he performed himself, on week-day afternoons,because he could not afford to pay union wages and because thefirst scab he had employed had had a ladder jerked out from underhim and been sent to the hospital with a broken collar-bone.The ten dollars for which Martin had sold "Treasure Hunters" to theChicago newspaper did not come to hand. The article had beenpublished, as he had ascertained at the file in the CentralReading-room, but no word could he get from the editor. Hisletters were ignored. To satisfy himself that they had beenreceived, he registered several of them. It was nothing less thanrobbery, he concluded - a cold-blooded steal; while he starved, hewas pilfered of his merchandise, of his goods, the sale of whichwas the sole way of getting bread to eat.Youth and Age was a weekly, and it had published two-thirds of histwenty-one-thousand-word serial when it went out of business. Withit went all hopes of getting his sixteen dollars.To cap the situation, "The Pot," which he looked upon as one of thebest things he had written, was lost to him. In despair, castingabout frantically among the magazines, he had sent it to TheBillow, a society weekly in San Francisco. His chief reason forsubmitting it to that publication was that, having only to travelacross the bay from Oakland, a quick decision could be reached.Two weeks later he was overjoyed to see, in the latest number onthe news-stand, his story printed in full, illustrated, and in theplace of honor. He went home with leaping pulse, wondering howmuch they would pay him for one of the best things he had done.Also, the celerity with which it had been accepted and publishedwas a pleasant thought to him. That the editor had not informedhim of the acceptance made the surprise more complete. Afterwaiting a week, two weeks, and half a week longer, desperationconquered diffidence, and he wrote to the editor of The Billow,suggesting that possibly through some negligence of the businessmanager his little account had been overlooked.Even if it isn't more than five dollars, Martin thought to himself,it will buy enough beans and pea-soup to enable me to write half adozen like it, and possibly as good.Back came a cool letter from the editor that at least elicitedMartin's admiration."We thank you," it ran, "for your excellent contribution. All ofus in the office enjoyed it immensely, and, as you see, it wasgiven the place of honor and immediate publication. We earnestlyhope that you liked the illustrations."On rereading your letter it seems to us that you are laboringunder the misapprehension that we pay for unsolicited manuscripts.This is not our custom, and of course yours was unsolicited. Weassumed, naturally, when we received your story, that youunderstood the situation. We can only deeply regret thisunfortunate misunderstanding, and assure you of our unfailingregard. Again, thanking you for your kind contribution, and hopingto receive more from you in the near future, we remain, etc."There was also a postscript to the effect that though The Billowcarried no free-list, it took great pleasure in sending him acomplimentary subscription for the ensuing year.After that experience, Martin typed at the top of the first sheetof all his manuscripts: "Submitted at your usual rate."Some day, he consoled himself, they will be submitted at my usualrate.He discovered in himself, at this period, a passion for perfection,under the sway of which he rewrote and polished "The JostlingStreet," "The Wine of Life," "Joy," the "Sea Lyrics," and others ofhis earlier work. As of old, nineteen hours of labor a day was alltoo little to suit him. He wrote prodigiously, and he readprodigiously, forgetting in his toil the pangs caused by giving uphis tobacco. Ruth's promised cure for the habit, flamboyantlylabelled, he stowed away in the most inaccessible corner of hisbureau. Especially during his stretches of famine he suffered fromlack of the weed; but no matter how often he mastered the craving,it remained with him as strong as ever. He regarded it as thebiggest thing he had ever achieved. Ruth's point of view was thathe was doing no more than was right. She brought him the anti-tobacco remedy, purchased out of her glove money, and in a few daysforgot all about it.His machine-made storiettes, though he hated them and derided them,were successful. By means of them he redeemed all his pledges,paid most of his bills, and bought a new set of tires for hiswheel. The storiettes at least kept the pot a-boiling and gave himtime for ambitious work; while the one thing that upheld him wasthe forty dollars he had received from The White Mouse. Heanchored his faith to that, and was confident that the reallyfirst-class magazines would pay an unknown writer at least an equalrate, if not a better one. But the thing was, how to get into thefirst-class magazines. His best stories, essays, and poems wentbegging among them, and yet, each month, he read reams of dull,prosy, inartistic stuff between all their various covers. If onlyone editor, he sometimes thought, would descend from his high seatof pride to write me one cheering line! No matter if my work isunusual, no matter if it is unfit, for prudential reasons, fortheir pages, surely there must be some sparks in it, somewhere, afew, to warm them to some sort of appreciation. And thereupon hewould get out one or another of his manuscripts, such as"Adventure," and read it over and over in a vain attempt tovindicate the editorial silence.As the sweet California spring came on, his period of plenty cameto an end. For several weeks he had been worried by a strangesilence on the part of the newspaper storiette syndicate. Then,one day, came back to him through the mail ten of his immaculatemachine-made storiettes. They were accompanied by a brief letterto the effect that the syndicate was overstocked, and that somemonths would elapse before it would be in the market again formanuscripts. Martin had even been extravagant m the strength ofthose on ten storiettes. Toward the last the syndicate had beenpaying him five dollars each for them and accepting every one hesent. So he had looked upon the ten as good as sold, and he hadlived accordingly, on a basis of fifty dollars in the bank. So itwas that he entered abruptly upon a lean period, wherein hecontinued selling his earlier efforts to publications that wouldnot pay and submitting his later work to magazines that would notbuy. Also, he resumed his trips to the pawn-broker down inOakland. A few jokes and snatches of humorous verse, sold to theNew York weeklies, made existence barely possible for him. It wasat this time that he wrote letters of inquiry to the several greatmonthly and quarterly reviews, and learned in reply that theyrarely considered unsolicited articles, and that most of theircontents were written upon order by well-known specialists who wereauthorities in their various fields.