nently in his front window. There was no time, then, to search for a photograph. A thrill of conviction pervaded me that at last my fingers were on a "story" that no magazine editor, however much he might hate to recognize the worth of new authors, could afford to reject.

The newspaper office files of clippings gave me all the information necessary for a brief biography; the lithograph should serve for an illustration. By midnight that Irresistible Wedge for entering the magazines was in the mails. ... Sure enough, the editors of Human Life bought it. And, by some miracle of speed in magazine making never explained to this day, they printed it in their next month's issue.

The moral of this was obvious-that in the proper market a real "story," even though it be somewhat hastily written, will receive a sincere welcome. The week after this Irresistible Wedge appeared in print I threw up my job as a reporter and dived off of the springboard into free lancing. A small bank account gave me assurance that there was no immediate peril of starving, and I wisely kept a connection with the local newspaper. In case disaster overtook me, I knew where I could find a job again.

CHAPTER V

A BEGINNER'S FIRST ADVENTURES

HAT happened to me in making a begin

W ning as a free lance producer of non-fic

tion might happen to any one else of an equal amount of inexperience. My home town had no professional magazine writer to whom I could turn for advice; and though I devoured scores of books about writing, they were chiefly concerned either with the newspaper business or with the technique of fiction, and they all failed to get down to brass tacks about my own pressing problem, which was how to write and sell magazine articles. I was not seeking any more ABC advice about newspaper "stories," nor did I feel the least urge toward producing fiction. I thirsted to find out how to prepare and market a manuscript to The Saturday Evening Post or Collier's, but the books in the public library were all about the short story and the novel, Sunday "features," the evolution of the printing press or the adventures of a sob sister on an afternoon daily.

So I had to go out and get my education as a magazine writer in a school of tough experiences. A few of these experiences are here recorded, in the hope that some of the lessons that were enforced upon me may be of help to other beginners.

The immediate results of my plunge into free lancing were:

JANUARY-not one cent.

FEBRUARY-$50.46. Seven dollars of this was for the magazine article. No other magazine acceptances had followed the Wedge. I had not yet caught the national viewpoint, nor had I picked up much practical information about the magazine markets.

By March it was becoming painfully evident that a fledgling free lance should, if he is wise, depend for a while upon a local newspaper for the larger part of his income. In a school of hard knocks I learned to sell "stories" of purely local interest to the Kansas City market, topics of state-wide interest to the St. Louis Sunday editors, and contributions whose appeal was as wide as the Gulf of Mexico to newspapers in Chicago and New York.

Also I learned that if the free lance hopes to make any of these markets take a lively interest in him, he will introduce his manuscripts with interesting photographs. I rented a little black

cube of a camera for twenty-five cents a day. It had a universal focus and nothing to bother about in the way of adjustments. To operate it you peeked into the range finder, then threw a lever. Its lens was so slow that no pictures could be taken with it except in bright sunlight.

I wrote about motor cars, willow farms, celebrities, freaks of nature in the city parks, catfish and junk heaps-anything of which I could snap interesting photographs and find enough text to "carry" the picture.

March saw me earn $126.00 by doing assignments for the city editor in the mornings and "stories" at space rates in the afternoons for the Sunday section. At night I plugged away at manuscripts hopefully intended for national periodicals. But not until late in September did I "land" in a big magazine. Then the thrill that comes once in a lifetime-I sold an article to Collier's. It required tremendous energy to keep up such a pace, but there was sweet comfort in the thought that, technically at least, I was now my own boss. Gradually, I broke away from assignment work until I was free to write what I liked and to go where I pleased.

From finding material in the city, I adventured into some of the near-by towns in Missouri and Kansas, and soon was arguing a theory that in every small town the local correspondents of big

city newspapers are constantly overlooking pay streaks of good "feature stories." Usually I would start out with twenty-five dollars and keep moving until I went broke. A railway journey no longer meant, as in reportorial days, a banquet in the dining-car and a chair on the observation platform, charged up on an expense account. Often enough I slept in a day coach, my head pillowed on a kodak wrapped in a sweater vest. The elevation was just right for a pillow; and at the same time the traveler was insured against theft of his most precious possession, a brand new folding camera of post card size.

For the little snapshot box soon showed its weakness in an emergency and had to be replaced with a better machine which had an adjustable diaphragm, a timing apparatus, a focusing scale and a front like an accordion. One afternoon it had happened that while two hundred miles from a city and twenty from the nearest railroad, the snapshot box had been useless baggage for two hours, while an anxious free lance sat perched on the crest of an Ozark mountain studying an overcast sky and praying for some sunlight. At last the sun blazed out for half a minute and the lever clicked in exultation.

This experience enforced a lesson: "Learn to take any sort of picture, indoors or out, on