“I wanted to ask you if you believed in cutting a man’s work--in other words, do you believe in blue-penciling?” “Ah, my boy, I see that they have been coloring your manuscript with the hateful crayon. No, I don’t believe in it. I dislike it now because it mars my work, and I used to hate it because it took money from my purse. Let me tell you a little incident. “One time, years ago, I wrote an article, and after it was done I figured on what I would get for it and with it. If I sold it to a certain monthly I had in mind I should receive enough to buy a new hat, a new suit, a pair of shoes, ditto of socks, and a necktie, for all of which I stood in sore need. I hied me forth in all the exuberance of youth and bore my manuscript to the editor. As he was feeling pretty good, he said he’d read it while I waited. At last he laid it down and said: ‘That’s a pretty good story.’ My heart leaped like an athlete. ‘But’--my heart stopped leaping and listened--‘it will need a little cutting, and I’ll do it now, if you wish.’” “Poor fellow!” said the Timid Aspirant, sympathetically. “Well, the first thing that editor did was to cut the socks off of it; then he made a deep incision in the hat; then he slashed away at the trousers and did some scattered cutting, and at last handed the manuscript to me that I might see the havoc he had wrought in my prospective wardrobe. Dear man, I had a vest and a necktie left, and that was all. And it would have been the same if it had been a dinner.” The Timid Aspirant shuddered. “Many a young author has seen the soup and the vegetables, and at last the steak, fade away under the terrible obliterating power of the indigo crayon, and lucky is he if a sandwich and a glass of water remain after the editor’s fell work. Blessed is that editor who does not care to work in pastel,--to whom the blue pencil is taboo,--for he shall be held in honored remembrance of all writers, and his end shall be peace.” “Amen!” said the Timid Aspirant. XX THE DIALECT STORE “I suppose I dreamed it; but if there isn’t such a store, there might be, and it would help quill-drivers a lot,” said the newspaper man, as he and his friend were waiting to give their order in a down-town restaurant yesterday noon. “What store are you talking about, and what dream? Don’t be so vague, old man,” said his friend the magazine-writer. “Why, a dialect store. Just the thing for you. I was walking down Fifth Avenue, near Twenty-first Street, and I saw the sign, ‘Dialect shop. All kinds of dialects sold by the yard, the piece, or in quantities to suit.’ I thought that maybe I might be able to get some Swedish dialect to help me out on a little story I want to write about Wisconsin, so I walked in. The place looked a good deal like a dry-goods store, with counters down each side, presided over by some twenty or thirty clerks, men and women.