A fragment of a conversation overheard the other evening, when the writer, half-buried with the daily proof-sheets from which he knows no escape, was hurrying westward on an afternoon train, is the raison d'Être of this communication. The participants were two young and pleasant-looking girls: they discussed matters feminine, of which only the words "toque," "a bewitching little thing," and "pink velvet" had reached my ears; but when I heard the question, "What became of your last poem, Clara?"—and the reply, "Youth's Companion, came back with a printed slip; Independent, ditto; then I tried the Waverley Magazine, who accepted it, but did not pay young contributors"; I became unthinkingly an interested eavesdropper, and just then, with creak and clatter, the train stopped, the station, "Wellesley," was called, and the fair ones departed, taking my thoughts (and all power of concentration on work in hand) with them. I mused in this wise: "Just why does the average young person give him (or her) self out in verse, good, bad, and indifferent?" The Youth's Companion does not want a Wellesley girl's lucubrations; it has verse on hand from many of the most skilled and charming writers in that line. But it does, I know, want good stories for boys, for girls,—and where can be a better "locale," materials for plot, sketches of life and character, etc., than at a girls' college? One could surely range "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," in such a field. The editor of the Atlantic, dear young people, accepts articles—well-written, of course—on questions relating to higher education, university extension, matters of historical research. Harper & Brothers are glad to get character sketches (not New England particularly,—you cannot outdo, quite yet, Miss Jewett and Mary Wilkins,—but there are many other bits of humanity, quaint, odd, or pathetic). Scribner's and the Cosmopolitan like travels, but they must be bright and varied; and mechanical articles, young men, but these must be a direct and forcible presentation of their subjects, and not rehashes from old books; while the Century will pay you well for some dainty comic bit for its "Bric-À-brac." Friends of the Golden Rule, Cottage Hearth, and Christian Register have assured me that good—not goody-goody—juvenile literature is very hard to get. I know a young woman who is paid well by the page for all the children's stories she can write, and her "The bearing of which lies in the application of it." Perhaps you may think, discouragingly, that there is no chance for you in these or any other specialties, but take my advice and try something awhile—get into a class and work to become at the head of that class; then, even if you do not attain the full measure of success you had hoped, you will certainly have the proud consciousness of having striven, and can contemplate with pity Those green and salad days: Can I rehearse Douglas Dane. |