them because editors don't want fanciful essays--or indeed any sort of
essays.

Let us see this fact clear: editors have little use for essays and they
have no use for views (except their own). To gain acceptance essays must
be extremely well done, and emphatically they are not stuff for beginners
to tackle. Apparently the easiest form of composition in the world, the
essay is in truth one of the most difficult. Not much experience is needed
to prove this. Yet every woman who aspires to journalism must needs employ
her clumsy pen upon essays. "From my Window" is a favourite title with the
rank beginner. Charles Lamb might conceivably have written an essay called
"From my Window" which would have been a masterpiece--and there is a
remote chance that some editor might have accepted it. But then Charles
Lamb is dead, and his secret died with him.

* * * * *

Despite the vast number of articles written and printed during recent
years, there remains a yet vaster number of articles waiting to be
written--even after leaving essays out of account. In fact the more
articles written, the more to be written. The field for copy has a
resemblance to Klondyke: removal of treasure serves only to bring larger
quantities into sight.

Journalism ever grows wider, more comprehensive; the whole history of the
profession demonstrates this. In the early years of daily journalism, for
example, the sole subjects deemed worthy of a newspaper's attention were
politics, money, and the law. Some conservative sheets still endeavour to
live up to this ideal, but the circulation and the influence go to those
which find no aspect of human existence beneath their notice. Formerly