down welcoming the couple when they came home and pretending everything was all right, though his heart was broken.
What are you blushing about, Tommie? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I thought it was very well written and if the editors had any sense they’d have taken it.
Still, I don’t believe the real editors see half the stories that are sent to them. In fact I know they don’t. You’ve either got to have a name or a pull to get your things published. Or else pay the magazines to publish them. Of course if you are Robert Chambers or Irving R. Cobb, they will print whatever you write whether it’s good or bad. But you haven’t got a chance if you are an unknown like Tom. They just keep your story long enough so you will think they are considering it and then they send it back with a form letter saying it’s not available for their magazine and they don’t even tell why.
You remember, Tom, that Mr. Hastings we met at the Hammonds’. He’s a writer and knows all about it. He was telling me of an experience he had with one of the magazines; I forget which one, but it was one of the big ones. He wrote a story and sent it to them and they sent it back and said they couldn’t use it.
Well, sometime after that Mr. Hastings was in a hotel in Chicago and a bellboy went around the lobby paging Mr.—I forget the name, but it was the name of the editor of this magazine that had sent back the story, Runkle, or Byers, or some such name. So the man, whatever his name was, he was really there and answered the page and afterwards Mr. Hastings went up to him and introduced himself and told the man about sending a story to his magazine and the man said he didn’t remember anything about it. And he was the editor! Of course he’d never seen it. No wonder Tom’s story keeps coming back!
He says he is through sending it and just the other day he was going to tear it up, but I made him keep it because we may meet somebody sometime who knows the inside ropes and can get a hearing with some big editor. I’m sure it’s just a question of pull. Some of the things that get into the magazines sound like they had been written by the editor’s friends or relatives or somebody whom they didn’t want to hurt their feelings. And Tom really can write!
I wish I could remember that poem of his I found. I memorized it once, but—wait! I believe I can still say it! Hush, Tommie! What hurt will it do anybody? Let me see; it goes:
I thought the sweetness of her song
Would ever, ever more belong
To me; I thought (O thought divine!)
My bird was really mine!
But promises are made, it seems,
Just to be broken. All my dreams
Fade out and leave me crushed, alone.
My bird, alas, has flown!
Isn’t that pretty. He wrote it four years ago. Why, Helen, you revoked! And, Tom, do you know that’s Scotch you’re drinking? You said—Why, Tom!
Rhythm
This story is slightly immoral, but so, I guess, are all stories based on truth. It concerns, principally, Harry Hart, whose frankness and naturalness were the traits that endeared him to fellow members of the Friars’ Club and all red-blooded she-girls who met him in and out of show business. Music writers have never been noted for self-loathing and Harry was a refreshing exception to the general run. That was before Upsy Daisy began its year’s tenancy of the Casino.
You can judge what sort of person he was by listening in on a talk he had at the club one night with Sam Rose, lyricist of “Nora’s Nightie,” “Sheila’s Shirt” and a hundred popular songs. They were sitting alone at the table nearest the senile piano.
“Sam,” said Harry, “I was wondering if they’s a chance of you and I getting together.”
“What’s happened to Kane?” asked Sam.
“It’s off between he and I,” Harry replied. “That dame ruined him. I guess she married him to make an honest man of him. Anyways, he got so honest that I couldn’t stand it no more. You know how I am, Sam—live and let live. I don’t question nobody’s ethics or whatever you call them, as long as they don’t question mine. We’re all trying to get along; that’s the way I look at it. At that, I’ve heard better lyrics than he wrote for those two rhythm numbers of mine in Lottie; in fact, between you and I, I thought he made a bum out of those two numbers. They sold like hymns, so I was really able to bear up when we reached the parting of the ways.
“But I’ll tell you the climax just to show you how silly a guy can get. You remember our Yes, Yes, Eulalie. Well, they was a spot for a swell love duet near the end of the first act and I had a tune for it that was a smash. You know I’m not bragging when I say that; I don’t claim it as my tune, but it was and is a smash. I mean the ‘Catch Me’ number.”
“I’ll say it’s a smash!” agreed Sam.
“But a smash in spite of the words,” said Harry.
“You’re right,” said Sam.
“Well, the first time I played this tune for him, he went nuts over it and I gave him a lead sheet and he showed it to his wife. It seems she plays piano a little and she played this melody and she told him I had stole it from some opera; she thought it was Gioconda, but she wasn’t sure. So the next day Kane spoke to me about it and I told him it wasn’t Gioconda; it was Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix. Well, he
