to the

    Cornhill

   an essay on the evolution of the Hittite syllabary, (for only one author could make

    that

   popular;) or a sketch of cock fighting among the ancients to the

    Monthly Record

   ; or an essay on

    Ayahs in India

   to an American magazine; or a biography of Washington or Lincoln to any English magazine whatever. We have them every month in some American periodicals, and our poor insular serials can get on without them: “have no use for them.”

   It is a minor, though valuable scheme, to send poems on Christmas to magazines about the beginning of December, because, in fact, the editors have laid in their stock of that kind of thing earlier. Always insist on

    seeing

   an editor, instead of writing to him. There is nothing he hates so much, unless you are very young and beautiful indeed, when, perhaps, if you wish to fail you had better

    not

   pay him a visit at the office. Even if you do, even if you were as fair as the Golden Helen, he is not likely to put in your compositions if, as is probable, they fall

    much

   below the level of his magazine.

   A good way of making yourself a dead failure is to go about accusing successful people of plagiarising from books or articles of yours which did not succeed, and, perhaps, were never published at all. By encouraging this kind of vanity and spite you may entirely destroy any small powers you once happened to possess, you will, besides, become a person with a grievance, and, in the long run, will be shunned even by your fellow failures. Again, you may plagiarise yourself, if you can, it is not easy, but it is a safe way to fail if you can manage it. No 

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