Shandygaff | Page 2

them to the books of those
publishers who bought advertising space. This simple and
statesmanlike view the owner had frequently expressed in Mr.
Stockton's hearing, so the latter was never very sure how long his job
would continue.
But Mr. Stockton had a house, a wife, and four children in New Utrecht,
that very ingenious suburb of Brooklyn. He had worked the problem
out to a nicety long ago. If he did not bring home, on the average,
eighty dollars a week, his household would cease to revolve. It simply
had to be done. The house was still being paid for on the installment
plan. There were plumbers' bills, servant's wages, clothes and schooling
for the children, clothes for the wife, two suits a year for himself, and

the dues of the Sheepshead Golf Club--his only extravagance. A simple
middle-class routine, but one that, once embarked upon, turns into a
treadmill. As I say, eighty dollars a week would just cover expenses.
To accumulate any savings, pay for life insurance, and entertain friends,
Stockton had to rise above that minimum. If in any week he fell below
that figure he could not lie abed at night and "snort his fill," as the
Elizabethan song naïvely puts it.
There you have the groundwork of many a domestic drama.
Mr. Stockton worked pretty hard at the newspaper office to earn his
fifty dollars. He skimmed faithfully all the books that came in, wrote
painstaking reviews, and took care to run cuts on his literary page on
Saturdays "to give the stuff kick," as the proprietor ordered. Though he
did so with reluctance, he was forced now and then to approach the
book publishers on the subject of advertising. He gave earnest and
honest thought to his literary department, and was once praised by Mr.
Howells in Harper's Magazine for the honourable quality of his
criticisms.
But Mr. Stockton, like most men, had only a certain fund of energy and
enthusiasm at his disposal. His work on the paper used up the first
fruits of his zeal and strength. After that came his article on current
poetry, written (unsigned) for a leading imitation literary weekly. The
preparation of this involved a careful perusal of at least fifty journals,
both American and foreign, and I blush to say it brought him only
fifteen dollars a week. He wrote a weekly "New York Letter" for a
Chicago paper of bookish tendencies, in which he told with a flavour of
intimacy the goings on of literary men in Manhattan whom he never
had time or opportunity to meet. This article was paid for at space rates,
which are less in Chicago than in New York. On this count he averaged
about six dollars a week.
That brings us up to seventy-one dollars, and also pretty close to the
limit of our friend's endurance. The additional ten dollars or so needed
for the stability of the Stockton exchequer he earned in various ways.
Neighbours in New Utrecht would hear his weary typewriter clacking
far into the night. He wrote short stories, of only fair merit; and he

wrote "Sunday stories," which is the lowest depth to which a
self-respecting lover of literature can fall. Once in a while he gave a
lecture on poetry, but he was a shy man, and he never was asked to
lecture twice in the same place. By almost incredible exertions of
courage and obstinacy he wrote a novel, which was published, and sold
2,580 copies the first year. His royalties on this amounted to
$348.30--not one-third as much, he reflected sadly, as Irvin Cobb
would receive for a single short story. He even did a little private
tutoring at his home, giving the sons of some of his friends lessons in
English literature.
It is to be seen that Mr. Stockton's relatives, back in Indiana, were
wrong when they wrote to him admiringly--as they did twice a
year--asking for loans, and praising the bold and debonair life of a man
of letters in the great city. They did not know that for ten years Mr.
Stockton had refused the offers of his friends to put him up for
membership at the literary club to which his fancy turned so fondly and
so often. He could not afford it. When friends from out of town called
on him, he took them to Peck's for a French table d'hôte, with an
apologetic murmur.
But it is not to be thought that Mr. Stockton was unhappy or
discontented. Those who have experienced the excitements of the
existence where one lives from hand to mouth and back to hand again,
with rarely more than fifty cents of loose change in pocket, know that
there is even a kind of pleasurable exhilaration in it. The characters in
George