“Your other faults?” replied the unconscious victim of lagging wit. “There is a strain of philosophy in your mind which unfits you for magazine work. A magazine should be light and not too original. People pick it up after the work of the day; they want to be amused and entertained, they do not want to think. Anything new, anything out of the beaten track, anything which does not suggest old and familiar favorites, anything which requires a mental effort to grasp, annoys them and affects the popularity of the magazine. Of course we like originality and imagination—do not misunderstand me; what we do not want is the complex, the radically original, or the deep. We have catered to a large circle of readers for a great many years; we know exactly what they want, and they know exactly what to expect. When they see the name of a new writer in our pages they feel sure that whatever may be the freshness and breeziness of the newcomer, he (or she) will not call upon them to witness the tunneling of unhewn rock—so to speak. Do you grasp my meaning?” (Hermia at home in her bed-chamber: “I see. Your distinctions are admirable. You want originality with the sting extracted, soup instead of blood, an exquisite etching rather than the bold sweep and color of brush and oils. Your contributors must say an old thing in a new way, or a new thing in so old a way that the shock will be broken, that the reader will never know he has harbored a new-born babe. Your little lecture has been of infinite value to me. I shall ponder over it until I evolve something worthy of the wary parent and the American Young Girl.”) Hermia in the editor’s den: “Oh, yes; thank you very much. But I am afraid I shall never do anything you will care for. Good-morning.” The next day she sent the manuscript to another magazine, and, before she could reasonably expect a reply, again invaded the sanctity of editorial seclusion. The genus editor amused her; she resolved to keep her courage by the throat and study the arbiters of literary destinies. It is probable that, if her second editor had not been young and very gracious, her courage would again have flown off on deriding wings; as it was, it did not even threaten desertion. She found the editor engaged in nothing more depressing than the perusal of a letter. He smiled most promisingly when she announced herself as the mysterious “Quirus,” but folded his hands deprecatingly.