My mind returns to the exceeding difficulty of obtaining the right contributors.  English editors have never appreciated the importance of this.  As English manufacturers sit still and wait for customers, so English editors sit still and wait for contributors.  The interestingness of the New Age, if I may make an observation which the editorial pen might hesitate to make, is due to the fact that contributors have always been searched for zealously and indefatigably.  They have been compelled to come in—­sometimes with a lasso, sometimes with a revolver, sometimes with a lure of flattery; but they have been captured.  American editors are much better than English editors in this supreme matter.  The profound truth has not escaped them that good copy does not as a rule fly in unbidden at the office window.  They don’t idiotically pretend that they have far more of the right kind of stuff than they know what to do with, as does the medium-fatuous English editor.  They cajole.  They run round.  They hustle.  The letters which I get from American editors are one of the joys of my simple life.  They are so un-English.  They write:  “Won’t you be good enough to let us hear from you?” Or, “We are anxious [underlined] to see your output.”  Imagine that from an English editor!  And they contrive to say what they mean, picturesquely.  One editor wrote me:  “We want material that will hit the mark without producing either insomnia or heart-failure.”  An editor capable of such self-expression endears himself at once to any possible contributor.  And, above all, they do not fear each other, as ours do, nor tremble at the thought of Mrs. Grundy (I mean the best ones).  A letter which I received only a few days ago ended thus:  “We are not running the magazine for the benefit of the Young Person, and we are not afraid of Realism so long as it is interesting.  Hoping to hear from you.”  I lay these paragraphs respectfully at the feet of the conductors of the new paper.

THE LENGTH OF NOVELS

[22 Sep. ’10]

It happened lately to a lady who is one of the pillars of the British Weekly to state in her column of innocuous gossip about clothes, weather, and holidays, that a hundred thousand words or three hundred and fifty pages was the “comfortable limit” for a novel.  I feel sure she meant no harm by it, and that she attached but little importance to it.  The thing was expressed with a condescension which was perhaps scarcely becoming in a paragraphist, but such accidents will happen even in the most workmanlike columns of gossip, and are to be forgiven.  Nevertheless, the Westminster Gazette has seized hold of the paragraph, framed it in 22-carat gold, and hung it up for observation, and a magnificent summer correspondence has blossomed round about it, to the great profit of the Westminster Gazette, which receives, gratis, daily about a column and a half of matter signed by