“It is a fine thing to know what you do not know. It set me to work to try to get what I did not have--a disciplined, well-ordered, logical mind, a store of knowledge, a really broad culture. Alas, I never got any of them, and I never shall. It takes different training and environment from infancy to produce them, as well as greater capabilities than mine. But I did at least get this--the habit of thinking things out for myself, and a poor opinion, thought out by the individual, is better than a lazy acceptance of some one else’s say-so. “Naturally, my year with Professor Emerson gave me a very low opinion of my chances to become a writer. I let writing alone for a while, and then began doing little light things for the Pittsburgh _Gazette_, one of whose staff I had met while on a visit to Pittsburgh. They were mostly little essays--though that word is really too dignified for them--on the foibles and fashions of the time. Sometimes a drop or two of sentiment and little amusing incidents that I gathered when visiting in Washington and Baltimore--we Southerners are great visitors, you know--occasionally a scrap of very light verse. “But this was not enough. I got restless and I wrote to the _Gazette_ people and asked for a job. I got it--I was to run the woman’s page of their evening paper, and do Sunday specials. After I arrived the duties of music critic were added, and later I had charge of a Sunday supplement. The people on the _Gazette_ were very kind and patiently tutored me through my greenhorn days. The training was excellent and I worked there very happily for several years. “But I had been trying some magazine work--more light, semi-humorous stuff, and the _Woman’s Home Companion_ bought several of my pieces. I went to New York to see them in the spring and in the fall I asked them for a job. And got it,--assistant to Miss Gertrude B. Lane, who was then the assistant editor, and is now the editor. “I have stayed with the _Companion_ ever since, save for a year when I went with the ill-starred _Circle_, and now I am managing editor. All this covers a period of over ten years. “After I got to New York the writing fever got me, and I tried some stories and more short articles of sentiment and humor. Some of these were published and some of them came back to me. More and more I tried to do fiction, and more and more I did it: now I have three books out--_Love at Large_, _The Blue Envelope_ and _The Golden Block_--and another in the works, and I’ve written innumerable short stories, most of which have been published. Of course the very best story I ever wrote I cannot sell. I occasionally run across a copy of that story in my rejected manuscript drawer and I say, ‘Never mind--some day I’ll wish you on an editor, yet.’