Better off in some respects, perhaps, dear reader, but in others his state is none the more gracious than it was in the days when Jack Moran’s “Stepmother’s Prayer” was rejected because Bonner was down on stepmothers. The great _Ledger_ editor has retired to his stock-farm, but the principles which have enabled him to possess a stock-farm still live in every magazine office in the land, and the writer of to-day must be just as careful in regard to forbidden topics as his predecessor was, and, moreover, must keep his eye on three or four editors, with their likes and their dislikes. But these remarks are not made in a carping spirit. There is some good reason for every one of these likes and dislikes. If Mr. Gilder prefers oatmeal to wheaten grits as a breakfast-table dish for the hero of the new _Century_ serial, it is because he has an eye on his Scotch subscribers; and if the manuscript of _Robinson Crusoe_ is returned to Mr. De Foe with the remark that “Burlingame is down on goats,” it is simply because _Scribner’s Magazine_ is not pushing its sale in Harlem and Williamsburg. In regard to the practice of cutting an idea into eight pieces and serving up each piece as a separate poem or story, can any one familiar with current literature deny that ideas are just as much cut up now as they ever were? More than that, have not some of our writers solved the old problem of making bricks without straw? Why, then, you ask, is their manuscript printed in preference to matter that is more virile and fresh and readable? For the same reason that Jack Moran’s “Stepmother’s Prayer” was returned to him by the very hand that was stretched forth in glad eagerness to grasp the sixteen poems that had sprung from the solitary idea of the two country brothers. Why, I know of one or two poets whose verses enjoy the widest sort of publicity, and who, I am sure, cut an idea into thirty-two pieces instead of sixteen. CHAPTER III. SOMETHING ABOUT “GOOD BAD STUFF.”