Not long before I had been in the den of the managing editor of one of the great metropolitan dailies, and the conversation had turned on the mass of unavailable communications that flooded his office on the arrival of every mail. "What is the proportion of accepted to rejected manuscripts?" I inquired.--"One in a hundred," he replied, and continued: "It is strange what crude ideas people have as to the needs and capacities of a daily journal. For instance, in this pile of 'unavailables' are poems, sketches, love-stories, theological disquisitions, scientific treatises, book-reviews, political squibs, biographies and essays on civil and social reform--not one rising above commonplace, and the majority the veriest trash imaginable; and this is sent to us in the face of the fact, which ought to be apparent to all, that we have a regular corps of trained writers and correspondents."--"And who are the producers of all this matter?" was my next query.--"Well," said he, "an editor who is harassed by them three hundred days in the year soon gets to classify them correctly, I think. There are three great classes. First, the dilettante scribblers, young men and young women of elegant leisure, who think literary distinction 'very nice,' and plunge into authorship for a little pleasant excitement or in the hope of winning fame. There are often glimpses of talent in the productions of this class, and with hard work they might succeed; but they only skim the surface, and the result is that their work doesn't reach even the respectable. The second class are those who without special talent embark in literature, expecting to make a living by it. The third class I pity: it consists of those who have some literary talent and a desire to improve it, but who lack the gift of expression or the constructive faculty, or some other requisite, and are simply incapable of producing anything worth putting in print. It is this class of incompetents that put the greatest strain on an editor's sensibilities, for their articles are almost, but never quite, available. If I could reach these literary aspirants I would whisper in their ears that modern journalism is an organized, elaborated profession, and that every conductor of a better-class journal, whether newspaper or magazine, has a corps of trained writers at command who to literary talent add the experience of years, and whose contributions are generally satisfactory. Yet it by no means follows that first-class articles from outside correspondents are neglected: on the contrary, it is because an occasional nugget is found that readers are employed to examine their miscellaneous correspondence. There now!" he added, laughingly, "I have given you some points for a sermon to the scribbling public, and as you have plenty of leisure you ought really to improve the opportunity."