“Have much trouble to sell your stuff, my boy?” “Oh, I suppose I oughtn’t to complain.” “Never destroy a manuscript, my boy. You don’t, do you?” “Sometimes, sir.” “Ah, don’t. You never know when it will become valuable. Anything written has its niche somewhere.” Then the Successful Author sank back in his arm-chair and continued reminiscently: “I’ll never forget how one of my articles fared. It was the fourth or fifth thing that I had written, and it was called ‘The Father of Santa Claus.’ I liked it better than any editor has ever liked anything of mine.” The Timid Aspirant nodded sympathetically, and the Successful Author continued: “I sent it to the ‘Prospect,’ and it came back promptly. Did I destroy it? Not at all. I pigeonholed it, and next year I sent it to them again. Again it came back, and once more I laid it to rest for a twelvemonth, and then bombarded the ‘Prospect’ with it. This sort of thing went on for several years, until at last, to save time, the editor had a special form of rejection printed for it that ran about as follows: “DEAR SIR: The time of year has come once more when we reject your story, ‘The Father of Santa Claus.’ It would not seem like the sweet Christmas season if we did not have a chance to turn it down. “Yours respectfully, “EDITOR THE PROSPECT.” “Let you down easy each year, didn’t he?” “Yes. Well, in course of time my price went up. At the start I’d have been tickled to death to get five dollars for the thing, but now I knew that if the editor ever did change his mind I’d get at least fifty, so I kept at it. Well, it was last year that my collection of stories made such a hit, and since then I’ve been so busy filling orders for short stories that I forgot to send my dear old mossback out this year. But day before yesterday I received a note from the editor of the ‘Prospect’ asking for a Christmas sketch. Now was my opportunity. I wrote back: “Sorry I haven’t anything new, but it struck me that you might like to look at an old thing of mine called ‘The Father of Santa Claus,’ and if you care to consider its publication I’ll let it go for a couple of hundred, just for the sake of old times. I inclosed the story, and just before coming here I received a check for two hundred dollars.” [Illustration] “What moral do you deduce from this, sir?” “Don’t ever sell anything until you’ve gotten a big reputation.” “Do you mind talking a little more shop?” asked the Timid Aspirant. Somehow he lost his timidity when talking to his renowned friend. “Of course not. No one really does, though some affect to. Most talk is shop talk. It may relate to plumbing, or to dry-goods, or to painting, or to babies, but it is of the shop shoppy, as a rule, only ‘literary shop talk,’ as Ford calls it, is more interesting to an outsider than the other kinds. What particular department of our shop did you want me to handle?”