* * * * *
The latter spoke to him as follows: "My dear boy, you had better get a
situation in the advertisement department of a paper--no matter what
paper, provided it has a large advertisement revenue; and no matter what
situation, however modest." Here the youth interrupted with the remark
that his desire was the editorial department. The ex-editor proceeded
calmly: "I have quite grasped that.... Well, you must work yourself up in
the advertisement department! What you chiefly require for success is a
good suit, a good club, an imperturbable manner, and a cultivated taste in
restaurants and bars. In your spare time you must write long dull articles
for the reviews; and you must rediscover London in a series of snappish
sketches for a half-penny daily, and also write a novel that is just true
enough to frighten the libraries and not too true to make them refuse it
altogether: it must absolutely be such a novel as they will supply only to
such subscribers as insist on having it. When you have worked your way
very high up in the advertisement department, and are intimate with
advertisement agents and large advertisers to the point of being able to
influence advertisements amounting to fifty thousand pounds a year--then,
and not before, you may look about you and decide what big serious daily
paper you would like to assist in editing.
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