I think that if I had known then that low life was only one of a thousand things that could not meet the approval of Johnson, and that, moreover, Bonner was down on fast horses, stepmothers, sisters, matrimonial cousins, and brindle-pups, I would have thrown down my pen and endeavored to support myself in some other way. But I did not know anything about the practical side of literature then, so I blundered on, wasting a great deal of time over forbidden topics, until I made the acquaintance of Jack Moran and others of his school, who welcomed me to Bohemia, and generously bade me share their treasure-house of accrued knowledge of editorial likes and dislikes. My low-life story--in my sublime faith I had written it on the flimsiest sort of paper--traveled from one office to another until it had eaten up $1.28 in postage and looked like Prince Lorenzo in the last act of _The Mascot_. Then, held together by copper rivets, it sank into its grave in the old daily _Truth_, unwept and unsigned. I came across this forgotten offspring of my literary youth not long ago, and candor compels me to say that if Mr. Johnson had read that story and printed it in the _Century Magazine_ he would not be to-day the dominant figure in the literature of our country that he is. My romance was not nearly as good as a great many that I have read in daily papers from the pens of clever newspaper men who know what they are writing about. In point of intense dramatic interest it was not within a thousand miles of the _Sun’s_ masterly history of the career of George Howard, the bank burglar, who was murdered in the Westchester woods about fifteen years ago. The story of Howard’s life and crimes was told in a page of the _Sun_, I think by Mr. Amos Cummings, and if I could find any fiction equal to it in one of our magazines I would gladly sound the praises of the editor who was courageous enough to publish it. I can afford to smile now as I recall the bitterness of spirit in which I used to chafe under the restrictions imposed upon us by the all-powerful barons of literature. I used to console my wounded vanity then by picturing to myself a bright future, when Johnson would stretch out his hands to me and beg me to place on the tip of his parched tongue a few pages of my cooling and invigorating manuscript. And with what derision would I have laughed then had any one told me that in the years to come I would be the one to accord to Mr. Johnson the honor which is his just due, and to recognize the wisdom which he showed in rejecting my story of low life! A truthful portrayal of life among the criminal and vicious classes would be as much out of place in the _Century Magazine_ as one depicting the love of a widower for his own cousin, whom he took out to ride behind a horse with a record of 2.53, would have been in the old _Ledger_; and I am positive that such a thing will not occur until after the close of the present literary dynasty.