A PERSEVERING CONTRIBUTOR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 11, 14 March 1891, Page 9

A PERSEVERING CONTRIBUTOR.

A good many years ago a magazinist whose name isnow famous sent his first manuscript to a magazine. It was rejected. After a time he sent another, which was also rejected, and next month another, which met the same fate.

Instead of being crushed by all this ill-fortune he began to send in two or three manuscripts every month, consisting of essays, sketches, poems, romances and tales of adventure, but not one of them all was accepted by the editor of the magazine in the course of the halt year during which the patient writer kept up his merry labours. This writer, however, did not become discouraged, but continued to send more and more manuscript to the office of the magazine, and at last they are thrown into a waste paper barrel near the editorial table without being looked at for the editor hail become disgusted over the scribbler’s pertinacity. The receptacle in which the manuscripts were kept came to be known in the office as • ’s barrel,’ and every month to the end of the year, he continued to add to its stock. The editor had ceased to take any interest in this paper stock, or in its growth or in the barrel, but often

told humorous stories about it to his literary visitors, wholaughed at them, as a matter of course.

One of these visitors, after laughing at a story about the barrel and the prolific contributor to it, got the notion that there must be ‘ something in ’ a writer of such extraordinaiy pertinacity. He took out of the barrel a manuscript, which happened to be a poem, looked at it, liked its opening, grew enthusiastic as he continued to read it, and when he had finished its perusal glorified the writer of it and told the editor of the magazine that this was a grand work which ought to lie given to the world at once. It was printed in next month’s magazine, to the amazement of its writer.

The popularity of the new poet was soon made manifest, and further piodnctions of Ins pen were now in demand. The old barrel was ransacked. The essays and other things there were eagerly seized by the editor of the magazine and were printed month after month. The writer of the rejected manuscripts l>egan to hear of hie renown. High remuneration was ofleied to him for his handiwork. His name is now known far and wide. He has for years past been enjoying the rewards of that extraordinary pertinacity and patience which he displayed when he first strove to gain admission into the literary field.