The literary year books and reference books do not make very cheerful reading these days, but there is a certain note in one of them that should not be allowed to remain in obscurity. It is contributed by the editor of an American journal, _Ambition_, who informs all writers and would-be writers that he and his paper are prepared to accept: Stories, 4,000-4,500 (words), in which the hero advances in position and earnings through study of a trade or profession by means of a correspondence course. (Preferred occupations indicated by Editor on application.) One can only hope that this passage has not met the eye of any reader of _Ambition_, one who has urged himself along the steep, narrow way, and found sustenance in such heartening tales, for he might become disillusioned, lag in his course (if only a correspondence course), and turn cynic or communist. Our editor, with true occidental ruthlessness, takes us behind the scenes with a vengeance; he strips each wretched player and spares us neither paint nor plaster-and-lath; had we any illusions on the matter, any roseate dreams of ‘advancing in position and earnings,’ which we have not, how rudely we should have been awakened. But one would have thought that the readers of _Ambition_, grimly practical fellows, every one of them essentially ‘a man of this world,’ were above the mere trifling of the story-teller, that they were ready, nay, eager, to face the stern facts, the naked issues of life, without calling in the writer of fiction to beguile and comfort them with his cunning old tricks. But no, even in this bleak and forbidding region, the story-teller is welcomed; the ancient craft is not allowed to perish even in these high altitudes. But while so much is conceded to frail human nature, the earnest young people who read _Ambition_ cannot have their minds stuffed with any glittering nonsense, love stories, tales of piracy, and the like; if there is to be fiction, it must be of one kind only. The hero must not be some absurd swashbuckler, the prey of we know not what romantic whims and fancies; he must be a good, solid young fellow ‘who advances in position and earnings through study of a trade or profession by means of a correspondence course.’ Well told, the story of such an enterprising youth must be worth any man’s reading.