One autumn day the customary package of gift copies of the new book
made its way to Andover Hill; but: I opened it without elation, the
experience being so far from my first of its kind. The usual note
of thanks was returned to the publishers, and quiet fell again.
Unconscious of either hope or fear, I kept on about my business,
and the new book was the last thing on earth with which I concerned
myself.
One morning, not many weeks after its publication, I received a letter
from Mr. James T. Fields. He, who was the quickest of men to do a
kindness, and surest to give to young writers the encouraging word for
which they had not hope enough to listen, had hurried himself to break
to me the news.
"Your book is moving grandly," so he wrote. "It has already reached
a sale of four thousand copies. We take pleasure in sending you--" He
enclosed a check for six hundred dollars, the largest sum on which I
had ever set my startled eyes. It would not, by my contract, have been
due me for six months or more to come.
The little act was like him, and like the courteous and generous house
on whose list I have worked for thirty years.
[Illustration]
EDITORIAL NOTES.
TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR SHORT STORIES.
We find considerable difficulty in getting the two hundred first-class
short stories that we require each year.
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