But the hardest task of all was dealing with the mourners--I mean the manuscript bearers. I found myself suddenly inside of the place, where I had so often stood outside. I was the man in the editorial chair, the arbiter of manuscript destiny, the despot who could accept or reject the writer’s article. But I was very uncomfortable. I hated to reject anybody’s writings, I felt so keenly for them. I had so many times been there myself. I wished I could take and pay for everybody’s manuscript. But I could not. The requirements of the paper stood like a wall ’twixt my duty and my sympathy. The commands from the management allowed only a certain amount to be expended weekly for original articles. I felt like a fiend--an unwilling one--as I said “No” time after time and sent men and women away with heavy hearts. In cases I tried even to get from the rejected a little sympathy for myself. I told them how hard it was for me to say “No.” I tried to convince them that mine was a much harder lot than theirs, and that mine was by far the greater misery. And how many times after I had suffered and rejected the MSS. did I try to answer in a manner satisfactory to them this question: “Did I know of any newspaper or magazine that would be likely to accept their matter?” How I tried to say that I did not, in a cheerful, consoling, and encouraging manner, in a manner which would convey to them and fill them with the idea that the town was full of places yawning and gaping for their articles, until they were outside of my office themselves, when I was willing that the cold unwelcome truth should freeze them. Then I received letters asking for the return of manuscript. On entering on my duties I found the shelves piled with them--legacies left me by various predecessors--whether read, accepted, or rejected, I could not find out. But there they lay roll on roll--silent, dust covered. It seemed a literary receiving vault, full of corpses. It was a suggestive and solemn spectacle for a young writer to look upon. Those many pounds of manuscript--articles which might make a sensation if printed--truths, maybe, which had not yet dawned on the world--all lying unread, dead, cold and unpublished. Lone, lorn ladies came to me with the children of their brains. I referred them at times to the editor of the daily up-stairs. He referred them to me back again. Sometimes this shuttlecock process was reversed. The daily editor fired the applicant down at me. I fired him up again. The trouble in all these cases lay in the inability of these people to recognize a rejection when it was mildly and sympathetically applied. It was necessary in some cases for us to fire these people up and down at each other a dozen times before their weary legs gave them a hint of the true state of the case.