Literature  as  a  Career  333

No  encouragements  to  the  literary  life?  Of
outside  encouragement,  none,  none,  none.  Why,
then,  this  rush,  this  competition,  this  ardent  yearn-
ing, which  draw  thousands  to  try  their  fortune,
year  after  year,  with  poem,  with  novel,  or  with
play  ?  Hundreds,  thousands  of  MSS.  are  on  their
travels  at  this  moment  from  publisher  to  publisher.
One  recognises  them  by  the  marks  on  the  outside
page.  This  number  shows  the  hand  of  the  house  ;
this  mark  reveals  the  fact  that  another  house  has
refused  it,  and  so  on.  Why  is  it,  if  there  are  no
encouragements  ?  There  are  two  reasons.  The
first,  the  simplest,  the  reason  which  accounts  for
ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred,  is  that  it  seems,
of  all  ways  of  making  money,  the  easiest.  Girls,
especially,  are  gifted  with  the  facile  pen.  They  all
want  money  ;  they  want  to  be  independent  ;  they
envy  the  girl  who  makes  her  own  income  and  lives
as  she  pleases.  To  write  a  novel  seems  the  easiest
way.  They  do  write  that  novel  ;  they  glow  with
aiiticipation  of  success  ;  then  comes  the  time  of
bitterness  and  of  disappointment.  Needless  to  say,
they  find  that  the  way  to  fame  and  fortune  is  not  so
easy  as  it  seems.  The  belief  that  money  is  easily
made  by  literature — that  is  the  chief  reason  why
these  thousands  of  pens  in  these  islands  are  rushing,
flying,  driving  across  the  everlasting  plains — the
endless  prairie — of  paper.
