He was reminded of the cruelty of all life and,
in consequence, of the increasing bitterness of his own.
He was writing--and in earnest at last. He had gone to Dick and listened
for a tense hour to an elucidation of those minutiae of procedure which
hitherto he had rather scornfully looked down upon. He needed money
immediately--he was selling bonds every month to pay their bills. Dick
was frank and explicit:
"So far as articles on literary subjects in these obscure magazines go,
you couldn't make enough to pay your rent. Of course if a man has the
gift of humor, or a chance at a big biography, or some specialized
knowledge, he may strike it rich. But for you, fiction's the only thing.
You say you need money right away?"
"I certainly do."
"Well, it'd be a year and a half before you'd make any money out of a
novel. Try some popular short stories. And, by the way, unless they're
exceptionally brilliant they have to be cheerful and on the side of the
heaviest artillery to make you any money."
Anthony thought of Dick's recent output, which had been appearing in a
well-known monthly. It was concerned chiefly with the preposterous
actions of a class of sawdust effigies who, one was assured, were New
York society people, and it turned, as a rule, upon questions of the
heroine's technical purity, with mock-sociological overtones about the
"mad antics of the four hundred.
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