Fancy the feelings of one who has poured out his whole soul in a poem descriptive of sisterly love and learns that his labor has been in vain, not because of any fault on his part, not because his poem is not good, but simply and solely because “Bonner is down on sisters”! And then I hear the carping critic ask if I call that good editing. I say that it was the very best of editing. At any rate, it was good enough to make the _Ledger_ fiction popular from one end of this country to the other; and it is because of that editing that we still find the old dusty files in the country garrets, along with the pop-corn ears and the wreaths of dried apples. I wonder how much of the ephemeral literature of to-day will be found sacredly guarded in anybody’s garret a quarter of a century hence? But there were other folks besides sisters and matrimonial cousins who were regarded with disfavor by the great editor and thinker who long ago set the pace for modern American fiction. Well do I remember Jack Moran coming upon us one bright morning, a dozen years ago, with bitter invective on his lips because his poem, “The Stepmother’s Prayer,” had been returned to him from the _Ledger_ office. He read it aloud to us, and then inquired, pathetically, “Isn’t that poem all right?” It was more than “all right.” It was a delicate, imaginative bit of verse, descriptive of the young bride kneeling reverently in the nursery of her new home and praying that God would make her a good mother to the sleeping stepchildren. It was a real poem--such a poem as poor, gifted Irish Jack Moran could write, but only when the mood was upon him, for he was not one of those makers of verse who go to work at six in the morning with their dinner-pails. “Ah, Jack!” exclaimed a sympathizing poet, “you never should have taken it to the _Ledger_. Didn’t you know that Bonner was down on stepmothers? Change it round so as to make the stepmother a beast, and he’ll give you ten for it.” “By the way, Jack, do you remember the time there was a death in the old man’s family, and we all got in on him with poems about meeting on the further shore and crossing the dark river?” “I do,” replied Jack, briefly. “It was worth just twenty to me.” And why was Bonner “down” on stepmothers? Simply because he wished to avoid giving offense to those who disapproved of second marriages, and who formed a very large part of his constituency. I hope that I have thrown sufficient pathos into my description of the condition of the poor rhymester of a dozen or fifteen years ago to touch the hearts of my sympathetic readers. How much better off, you say, is the literary man of to-day, who makes steady wages in Franklin Square, or occupies one of the neat white cottages erected for the employees of the McClure Steam Syndicate Mills in Paterson!