The Captains Toll-Gate | Page 3

young when I determined to write some fairy tales because
my mind was full of them. I set to work, and in course of time
produced several which were printed. These were constructed
according to my own ideas. I caused the fanciful creatures who
inhabited the world of fairy-land to act, as far as possible for them to do
so, as if they were inhabitants of the real world. I did not dispense with
monsters and enchanters, or talking beasts and birds, but I obliged these
creatures to infuse into their extraordinary actions a certain leaven of

common sense."
It was about this time, while very young, that he and his brother
became ambitious to write stories, poems, and essays for the world at
large. They sent their effusions to various periodicals, with the result
common to ambitious youths: all were returned. They decided at last
that editors did not know a good thing when they saw it, and hit upon a
brilliant scheme to prove their own judgment. One of them selected an
extract from Paradise Regained (as being not so well known as Paradise
Lost), and sent it to an editor, with the boy's own name appended,
expecting to have it returned with some of the usual disparaging
remarks, which they would greatly enjoy. But they were disappointed.
The editor printed it in his paper, thereby proving that he did know a
good thing if he did not know his Milton. Mr. Stockton was fond of
telling this story, and it may have given rise to a report, extensively
circulated, that he tried to gain admittance to periodicals for many years
before he succeeded. This is not true. Some rebuffs he had, of
course--some with things which afterward proved great successes--but
not as great a number as falls to the lot of most beginners.
The Ting-a-Ling tales proved so popular that Mr. Stockton followed
them at intervals with long and short stories for the young which
appeared in various juvenile publications, and were afterward published
in book form--Roundabout Rambles. Tales out of School, A Jolly
Fellowship, Personally Conducted, The Story of Viteau, The Floating
Prince, and others. Some years later, after he had begun to write for
older readers, he wrote a series of stories for St. Nicholas, ostensibly
for children, but really intended for adults. Children liked the stories,
but the deeper meaning underlying them all was beyond the grasp of a
child's mind. These stories Mr. Stockton took very great pleasure in
writing, and always regarded them as some of his best work, and was
gratified when his critics wrote of them in that way. They have become
famous, and have been translated into several languages, notably Old
Pipes and the Dryad, The Bee Man of Orne, and The Griffin and the
Minor Canon. This last story was suggested by Chester Cathedral, and
he wrote it in that venerable city. The several tales were finally
collected into a volume under the title: The Bee Man of Orne and Other
Stories, which is included in the complete edition of his novels and
stories. During the whole of his literary career Mr. Stockton was an

occasional contributor of short stories and essays to The Youth's
Companion.
Mr. Stockton considered his career as an editor of great advantage to
him as an author. In an autobiographical paper he writes:
"Long-continued reading of manuscripts submitted for publication
which are almost good enough to use, and yet not quite up to the
standard of the magazine, can not but be of great service to any one
who proposes a literary career. Bad work shows us what we ought to
avoid, but most of us know, or think we know, what that is. Fine
literary work we get outside the editorial room. But the great mass of
literary material which is almost good enough to print is seen only by
the editorial reader, and its lesson is lost upon him in a great degree
unless he is, or intends to be, a literary worker."
The first house in which we set up our own household goods stood in
Nutley, N.J. We had with us an elderly _attaché_ of the Stockton
family as maid-of-all-work; and to relieve her of some of her duties I
went into New York, and procured from an orphans' home a girl whom
Mr. Stockton described as "a middle-sized orphan." She was about
fourteen years old, and proved to be a very peculiar individual, with
strong characteristics which so appealed to Mr. Stockton's sense of
humor that he liked to talk with her and draw out her opinions of things
in general, and especially of the books she had read. Her spare time was
devoted to reading books, mostly of the blood-curdling variety; and she
read them to herself aloud in