Besides these regular attacks on the literary periodicals, Ray carried on guerilla operations of several sorts. He sold jokes at two dollars apiece to the comic papers; it sometimes seemed low for jokes, but the papers paid as much for a poor joke as a good one, and the market was steady. He got rather more for jokes that were ordered of him, as when an editor found himself in possession of an extremely amusing illustration without obvious meaning. He developed a facility wholly unexpected to himself in supplying the meaning for a picture of this kind; if it were a cartoon, he had the courage to ask as much as five dollars for his point. A mere accident opened up another field of industry to him, when one day a gentleman halted him at the foot of the stairway to an elevated station, and after begging his pardon for first mistaking him for a Grand Army man, professed himself a journalist in momentary difficulty. “I usually sell my things to the _Sunday Planet_, but my last poem was too serious for their F. S., and I’m down on my luck. Of course, I see _now_,” said the journalist in difficulty, “that you _couldn’t_ have been in the war; at first glance I took you for an old comrade of mine; but if you’ll leave your address with me--Thank you, sir! Thank you!” Ray had put a quarter in his hand, and he thought he had bought the right to ask him a question. “I know that I may look twice my age when people happen to see double”-- “Capital!” said the veteran. “First-rate!” and he clapped Ray on the shoulder, and then clung to him long enough to recover his balance. “But _would_ you be good enough to tell me what the F. S. of the _Sunday Planet_ is?” “Why, the Funny Side--the page where they put the jokes and the comic poetry. F. S. for short. Brevity is the soul of wit, you know.” Ray hurried home and put together some of the verses that had come back to him from the comic papers, and mailed them to the _Sunday Planet_. He had learned not to respect his work the less for being rejected, but the _Planet_ did not wane in his esteem because the editor of the F. S. accepted all his outcast verses. The pay was deplorably little, however, and for the first time he was tempted to consider an offer of partnership with a gentleman who wrote advertisements for a living, and who, in the falterings of his genius from overwork, had professed himself willing to share his honors and profits with a younger man; the profits, at any rate, were enormous.