"That I will never do, my friend, though the heavens should crack! My
fellow-workers in literature have kicked me down at every opportunity,
and done their best to keep me from earning a bare livelihood,--it is my
turn at kicking now, and I will show them as little mercy, as little
help, as little sympathy as they have shown me!"
"Revenge is sweet!" he quoted sententiously--"I should recommend your
starting a high-class half-crown magazine."
"Why?"
"Can you ask? Just think of the ferocious satisfaction it would give you
to receive the manuscripts of your literary enemies, and reject them! To
throw their letters into the waste-paper basket, and send back their
poems, stories, political articles and what not, with '_Returned with
thanks_' or '_Not up to our mark_' type-written on the backs thereof! To
dig knives into your rivals through the medium of anonymous criticism!
The howling joy of a savage with twenty scalps at his belt would be tame
in comparison to it! I was an editor once myself, and I know!"