The Young Contributor | Page 4

Young Contributor
by William Dean Howells

THE EDITOR'S RELATIONS WITH THE YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR
One of the trustiest jokes of the humorous paragrapher is that the editor
is in great and constant dread of the young contributor; but neither my
experience nor my observation bears out his theory of the case.
Of course one must not say anything to encourage a young person to
abandon an honest industry in the vain hope of early honor and profit
from literature; but there have been and there will be literary men and
women always, and these in the beginning have nearly always been
young; and I cannot see that there is risk of any serious harm in saying
that it is to the young contributor the editor looks for rescue from the
old contributor, or from his failing force and charm.
The chances, naturally, are against the young contributor, and vastly
against him; but if any periodical is to live, and to live long, it is by the
infusion of new blood; and nobody knows this better than the editor,
who may seem so unfriendly and uncareful to the young contributor.
The strange voice, the novel scene, the odor of fresh woods and
pastures new, the breath of morning, the dawn of tomorrow--these are

what the editor is eager for, if he is fit to be an editor at all; and these
are what the young contributor alone can give him.
A man does not draw near the sixties without wishing people to believe
that he is as young as ever, and he has not written almost as many
books as he has lived years without persuading himself that each new
work of his has all the surprise of spring; but possibly there are wonted
traits and familiar airs and graces in it which forbid him to persuade
others. I do not say these characteristics are not charming; I am very far
from wishing to say that; but I do say and must say that after the fiftieth
time they do not charm for the first time; and this is where the
advantage of the new contributor lies, if he happens to charm at all.

I.
The new contributor who does charm can have little notion how much
he charms his first reader, who is the editor. That functionary may bide
his pleasure in a short, stiff note of acceptance, or he may mask his joy
in a check of slender figure; but the contributor may be sure that he has
missed no merit in his work, and that he has felt, perhaps far more than
the public will feel, such delight as it can give.
The contributor may take the acceptance as a token that his efforts have
not been neglected, and that his achievements will always be warmly
welcomed; that even his failures will be leniently and reluctantly
recognized as failures, and that he must persist long in failure before
the friend he has made will finally forsake him.
I do not wish to paint the situation wholly rose color; the editor will
have his moods, when he will not see so clearly or judge so justly as at
other times; when he will seem exacting and fastidious, and will want
this or that mistaken thing done to the story, or poem, or sketch, which
the author knows to be simply perfect as it stands; but he is worth
bearing with, and he will be constant to the new contributor as long as
there is the least hope of him.

The contributor may be the man or the woman of one story, one poem,
one sketch, for there are such; but the editor will wait the evidence of
indefinite failure to this effect. His hope always is that he or she is the
man or the woman of many stories, many poems, many sketches, all as
good as the first.
From my own long experience as a magazine editor, I may say that the
editor is more doubtful of failure in one who has once done well than of
a second success. After all, the writer who can do but one good thing is
rarer than people are apt to think in their love of the improbable; but the
real danger with a young contributor is that he may become his own
rival.
What would have been quite good enough from him in the first instance
is not good enough in the second, because he has himself fixed his
standard so high. His only hope is to surpass himself, and not begin
resting on his laurels too soon; perhaps it is never well, soon or late, to
rest upon one's laurels. It is well for one to make one's self scarce, and
the best way to do this is to be