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340 EDITORS AND OTHERS 3. Most Editors are men and women who have risen from the ranks and who have gained their preferment as a result of study and application. They realize that they have benefited by the advice of others in their student days, and are willing to pass along this obliga- tion to others, but they prefer, and are entitled, to select tliose whom tliey will thus aid and themselves will determine the merits of the various applicants. 4. It is useless to write and ask an Editor that he favor you by telling why he sent back a certain script. Probably he has forgotten the story. He will remember if he sees it again, but he cannot recall, from tlae hundreds of scripts he handles, one particular story that gained his passing notice three weeks before. To return the script, that he may refresh his memory, will not serve. He is there to pur- chase manuscript, not to criticise it. He has all he can do to keep pace with his work, and while he does take much of his spare time to give suggestions to contributors, he makes these suggestions only in directions from which he may expect some return in stories suited to his needs. 5. You will probably receive no reply to such a request, nor does the inclosure of a stamp or a stamped return envelope alter the situation, for a stamped envelope imposes no obligation whatever upon your correspondent. You have sent it in the hope of encourag- ing a reply. It is a courtesy that must be shown if you have any hope of a reply, but it is not in any sense a guarantee that you will receive one. 6. Your relations with the Editor are no more than this: you have something to sell. He may wish to buy. You ask him to inspect your wares. He does so. If he says he does not want them, the matter ends. You shove into the gutter the importunate newsboy who seeks to force his papers on you. You never realize that your overeagerness may fill the Editor with the same desire summarily to get rid of you. 7. If the Editor does make a suggestion, do not sit down and write him a long letter, telling him all about yourself, your past history, your future hopes and wind up with an additional page telling him how much his seven word suggestion has helped you, how you now see all your faults and will correct them, and how his encouragement has put new heart into you. Do not do that or any part of it. Prove it, without words, by profiting by the advice. He is trying to help you that you may give him the sort of scripts he wants. Thank him by trying to give him just what he wants. Then when you send it in you can add a line very briefly thanking him for his suggestion and expressing the hope that he will find the inclosed story more to his liking. In the course of time a pleasant correspondence may develop, hut it never will if you grow so verbose in your writings that the Editor dreads to open your letters, knowing that there will be one third script and two thirds personal pronoun. 8. Above all things, do not suppose that you can "roast" an Editor