The Confessions of a Newspaper Woman
By Helen M. Winslow
I can scarcely remember the time when I did not intend to be a writer. In my childhood days I used to dream dreams of the time when my name should be as well known to other children as those of Louisa Alcott and J. T. Trowbridge were to me; and in my early girlhood I essayed a short story of less than mediocre merit and sent it off to a New York publisher, who deemed it worthy of so much less consideration than the trash he was publishing that it came back to cut short effectually my youthful ambitions. There was no further wooing of the muses, except in the matter of flowery “compositions,” until after my school-days were well past. But the day of dreaming was never ended, and every dewy morning, every glowing sunset, every vine that trailed along the dusty roadside, was woven into a romance or a fugitive, unwritten bit of song. There came a day when the songs began to be written surreptitiously, for I was not in a literary atmosphere, and was as sensitive to criticism as when, at the age of nine, I had burst forth one spring afternoon with an ode to the insects that hummed around us, only to be jeered at by an unfeeling brother.
The time had come when I wanted to express myself on paper, and was beginning to do so, tentatively. Verses accompanied by pencil or charcoal sketches were made and hidden shyly away lest some one see them. How much better if I had gone on with them until something of real worth had come, and with it then courage to submit it to an editor. But by some accident of fate, there came an editor, and, all unknowing, gave me the wrong impetus. It was only the editor and publisher of the county journal,—have I said we lived far out in the country? He sat behind me during a school exhibition,—a rather meagre place to display my latent literary talent. When it was over he spoke to me.
“I want a good correspondent from this town,” he said. “I am convinced you will be a good one. Take it.” In vain I said I had no knowledge of what was wanted; he saw in me the making of a good newspaper woman in a day when women journalists could be counted on the fingers of the hands. In the end I began, not only contributing items of interest about town (at five cents apiece), but “writing up” the occasional conventions, cattle shows, camp-meetings, and other festivities of the locality. In this way I gained a facility in the use of the pen, and increased my vocabulary, without too much of a strain on time or brain. Then, with family changes, came a day when I must choose whether I would remain in the country, writing there, or seek a wider field in the town. I had already begun to send out poems and stories with fair success, getting a proportion of my things published, and even an occasional check. The proudest moment of my life was when I received a check from the Atlantic Monthly for four dollars to pay for a screed in the “Contributors’ Club,”—the only one, alas! I wondered whether I would not attain my heart’s desire sooner by staying in the country and working steadily, slowly, surely on until I made a name among writers of good poetry and fiction. I had sense enough even then to see that my best chance might possibly lie there; to-day I believe it did. But the resources of the village where I lived were woefully limited. There was no good library; my father’s was better. And society was as narrow as it knows how to be in a small New Eng-
