  THE WOLF ON For Edwards, the year 1895 dawned in a blaze of prosperity and went out in the gathering shadows of impending disaster. Spring found him literally swamped with orders, and he tried the experiment of hiring a young man stenographer and typist to assist him. The young man was an expert in his line and proved so efficient an aide that Edwards hired another who was equally proficient. Two stenographers failing to help him catch up with his flood of orders, he secured a third. One assistant put in his time copying manuscripts and cataloguing clippings, to another the library work was dictated, and the third was employed on "Stella Edwards" material. Edwards was versatile, and he experienced no difficulty in passing from one class of work to another. He was able to chronicle the breathless adventures of the hero of the Five-Cent Library to one stenographer, then turn to the other and dictate two or three chapters of a serial of the class written by Laura Jean Libby, and then fill in the gaps between dictation with altogether different work on his own machine. Although Edwards kept these three stenographers for several months, and although he has since frequently availed himself of the services of an amanuensis, yet he is free to confess that he doubts the expediency of such With such an office force grinding out copy, during the early months of 1895 the Fiction Factory was a very busy place. During January and February the cash returns amounted to $1,500. This, Edwards discovered later, was no argument in favor of stenographer assistance, for he has since, working alone, earned upward of $1,000 in a month. In February Edwards was requested by Harte & Perkins to submit a story for a new detective library which they were starting, and of which they were very choice. The work was as different as possible from the two or three detective yarns Edwards had written in 1893. He wrote and submitted the story, and Mr. Perkins' criticisms are given below by way of showing how carefully the stories were examined. The letter from which the excerpt is taken was written Feb. 13, 1895. The mythical detective, who has become known throughout the length and breadth of the land, shall here be referred to as "Joe Blake."
This will illustrate the care with which Harte & Perkins looked over the manuscripts submitted to them, to the end that they might be made to reflect their ideas of what good manuscripts should be. If a writer could not do their work the way they wanted it done he was not long in getting his conge. In the case of the story mentioned above, it was returned, rewritten, and made to conform to Mr. Perkins' ideas. On Jan. 9 Harte & Perkins had written Edwards:
This meant a loss of $10 a week, and Edwards endeavored to make up for it by increasing his output. Particularly he wanted a chance to write another "Stella Edwards" story, just to show the firm that he could do the work. Mr. Harte gave him an order for the serial, stating that the new story was to follow "The Bicycle
With the order came a picture which it was desired to use in illustrating the opening installment. Edwards was to write the installment around the picture. He completed the story, called it "Little Bluebell," and received the following commendation after two installments had been received and read:
Although he was turning out Five-Cent Libraries, Stella Edwards serials, short sketches for Puck and stories for other publishers than Harte & Perkins, Edwards was constantly on the alert for more work in order to keep his stenographers busy. He asked Mr. Perkins for orders for the Ten-Cent Library, and for juvenile serials for the boys' paper. He was allowed to send in some "Gentlemen Jim" stories for the dime publication. The pay was not munificent, however, being only $50 for 37,000 words. The "Little Bluebell" story was followed by another "Stella Edwards" serial entitled "A Weird Marriage." This yarn hit the bull's-eye with a bang. In fact, it was said to be the best thing ever done by "Stella Edwards." And then, after scoring these two successive hits, Edwards tripped on a third story called "Beryl's Lovers," In the Fall of 1895 Edwards discovered that he had been working too hard. A doctor examined his lungs, declared that he was threatened with tuberculosis and ordered him to the Southwest. In November he and his wife left Chicago, Edwards carrying with him his typewriter and a plentiful supply of typewriter paper. He transformed a stateroom in the compartment sleeper into his Fiction Factory, finishing two installments of the ill-fated "Beryl's Lovers" while enroute. These installments, forwarded from Phoenix, Arizona, by express, went into a wreck at Shoemaker, Kansas, and were delivered to Harte & Perkins, torn and illegible, two weeks after the story had been taken over by another writer. Edwards filed a claim against the express company for $300, and then compromised for $50—all the express people were liable for by the terms of their receipt. From November, 1895, until April, 1896, Edwards was located on a ranch near Phoenix, Arizona, writing Five-Cent Libraries for Harte & Perkins and sketches and short stories for other publishers. His health was steadily declining, and he could bring himself to his work only by a supreme effort of the will and at the expense of much physical torture. In May, 1896, he was told that he must get farther away from the irrigated districts around Phoenix and into the arid hills. To this end he interested himself in a gold mine, and went East to form a company and secure the necessary capital to purchase and develop it. About the middle of July he returned to Phoenix, still writing but hoping for golden rewards from the mining venture which would ultimately make his writing less of a business and more of a pastime. His health continued to decline and he was ordered to give up writing entirely and exercise constantly in the open. He at once telegraphed Harte & Perkins to this effect. On Oct. 13 they wrote:
So the old firm and Edwards parted for a time. A few weeks proved the mining venture a failure, and $10,000 which Edwards had put away out of the profits of his writing had vanished—gone to make the failure memorable. Nor had his health returned. In some desperation, just before New Year's of '97, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards entrained for New York, Edwards pinning his hopes to Harte & Perkins. He had less than $100 to his name when he and his wife reached the metropolis. One hundred dollars will not carry a man and his wife very far in New York, even when both are in good health and the man can work. Ambition alone kept Edwards alive and gave him hope for the future. The Factory out-put for 1895:
For 1896:
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