Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE EDITOR'S RELATIONS WITH THE YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR ONE of the trustiest jokes of the humorous para- grapher is that the editor is in great and constant dread of the young contributor; but neither my experience nor my observation bears out his theory of the case. Of course one must not say anything to encourage a young person to abandon an honest industry in the vain hope of early honor and profit from literature; but there have been and there will be literary men and women always, and these in the beginning have nearly always been young; and I cannot see that there js risk of any serious harm in saying that it is to the young contributor the editor looks for rescue from the old contributor, or from his failing force and charm. The chances, naturally, are against the young contributor, and vastly against him; but if any periodical is to live, and to live long, it is by the infusion of new blood; and nobody knows this better than the editor, who may seem so unfriendly and uncareful to the young contributor. The strange voice, the novel scene, the odor of fresh woods and pastures new, the breath of morning, the dawn of to-morrow—these are what the editor is eager for, if he is fit to be an editor at all; and these are what the young contributor alone can give him. A man does not draw near the sixties without wishing people to believe that he is as young as ever, andhe has not written almost as many books as he has lived years without persuading himself that each new work of his has all the surprise of spring; but possibly there are wonted traits and familiar airs and graces in it which forbid him to persuade others. I do not say these characteristics are not charming; I am very far from wishing to say that; but I do say and must say that after the fiftieth time they do not... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.