The Monticellonian., 1904-07-07
HOW JACK LONDON ARRIVED
Story of Early Struggles Toward Sue cess of Brilliant War Cor
 respondent.

Jack London, the fascinating short story writer and brilliant war corre- | spondent, now at the front, is but 2S | years old, says the Boston Globe. | Three years ago he was unheard of by the reading world. To-day he is read everywhere, is sought by pub fishers, and the pages of the maga- | zines, from the Century down, are | open to him.
 The story of his early privations and | hardships-his boyhood on a Califor- mia ranch, his years before the mast i in the waters of the Golden Gate, his struggle for learning, and the daring trip to the Klondike, from which he returned with more knowledge than nuggets-is known 10 most of his readers now. The story of how he arrived" how he first set foot upon the stepping stone to success, he tells in the Editor, the New York magazine for literary workers. incidentally giv- ing the latter class some excellent ad- vice. Here are a few of his terse pregnant sentences:
 Work! Don't walt for some good Samaritan to tell you, but dig it out yourself.
 Fiction pays best of all.
 Don't write too much. Don't dash off 6,000word story before breakfast.
 Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the hor- rible-if you care to see in print the things you write.
 I[oan with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that fiutters up into your brain.
 This valuable advice is appended to the story of his own struggle for recognition. Every one likes to know how the successful succeed
 He had many liabilities and no as- sets, no income and several mouths to feed. He lived in California, far from the great publishing centers, and did not know what an editor looked like. But he sat down and wrote. Day by day his pile of manuscripts mounted up. He had vague ideas, obtained from a Sunday supplement, that minimum rate of ten dollars a thou sand words was paid. and figured on earning $500 a month, without over stocking the marKet
 One morning the postman brought him. instead of the usual long. thick manuscript envelope, a short. thin one. He couldn't open it right away It seemed a sacred thing. It contained the written words of an editor of big magazine. When. modest as ever. he had figured in his mind what the offer for this 4,000-word story would be at the minimum rate-s40. of course-he opened the letter Five dollars!
 Not having died right then and there, Mir London is convinced that he may yet qualify as an oldest inhab- itant
 But, by and by, in the course of it's wanderings, one of his stories reached an editor who could see the genius of Jack London, and had the patience to penetrate beneath the husk of wordy introduction and discover the golden grain-the capital Story, with a capital s, and-rarest quality of all-the busi- ness sagacity to offer an unknown writer more for a good story than he would pay for a commonplace one from a famous author
 Here is the incident that proved the turning point in Jack Londons liter ary career, as he so graphically tells it:
 Nothing remained but to get out and shovel coal. I had done it before, and earned more money at it. re- solved to do it again, and I certainly should have done it, had it not been for The Black Cat
 "Yes, The Black Cat The postman brought me an offer from it for 4,000-word story which was more lengthy and strengthy, If would grant permission to cut it down half. Grant permission? I told them they could cut it down two-halves if they'd only send the money along, which they did, by return mail. As for the five dollars previously mentioned. finally received it, after publication and great deal of embarrassment and trouble. l forgot my coal-shoyeing resolution. and continued to whang away at the typewriter.
 And the rate he received for his first Black Cat story was nearly 20 times what the five-dollar editor paid.
 Nor is Jack London the only writer who has been lifted from obscurity to prominence by the lucky Black Cat, which, as the New York Press has truly said, has done more for short story writers and short-story readers taan any other publication.
 Each of it's famous prize competi- tions has brought new writers to the front. In it's most recent. the s2,100 prize was won by young Texan who had never before written a story. and the second s1.300, went to a lawyers wife in an obscure Missouri town
 It has just inaugurated another con- test in which s10600 will be paid to writers in sums of from s10o to sl .5O0. This will, no doubt, add many new names to the list of those who have arrived through it's recognition
 The conditions are announced in the current issue of The Black Cat, and will also be mailed free to any one by The Shortstory Publishing company, Boston. Mass. Even those who can not write a winning story themselves 1-.1I