Array Коллектив авторов - 75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

‘But surely,’ began the contributor, beginning to wring his hands–

‘Don’t interrupt me,’ I said. ‘In the next place, the story is much too long.’ Here I reached for a large pair of tailor’s scissors that lay on the table. ‘This story contains nine thousand words. We never care to use more than six thousand. I must therefore cut some of it off.’ I measured the story carefully with a pocket tape that lay in front of me, cut off three thousand words and handed them back to the author. ‘These words,’ I said, ‘you may keep. We make no claim on them at all. You are at liberty to make any use of them that you like.’

‘But please,’ he said, ‘you have cut off all the end of the story: the whole conclusion is gone. The readers can’t possibly tell—’

I smiled at him with something approaching kindness.

‘My dear sir,’ I said, ‘they never get beyond three thousand words of the end of a magazine story. The end is of no consequence whatever. The beginning, I admit, may be, but the end! Come! Come! And in any case in our magazine we print the end of each story separately, distributed among the advertisements to break the type. But just at present we have plenty of these on hand. You see,’ I continued, for there was something in the man’s manner that almost touched me, ‘all that is needed is that the last words printed must have a look of finality. That’s all. Now, let me see,’ and I turned to the place where the story was cut, ‘what are the last words: here: ‘Dorothea sank into a chair. There we must leave her!’ Excellent! What better end could you want? She sank into a chair and you leave her. Nothing more natural.’

The contributor seemed about to protest. But I stopped him.

‘There is one other small thing,’ I said. ‘Our coming number is to be a Plumbers’ and Motor Number. I must ask you to introduce a certain amount of plumbing into your story.’ I rapidly turned over the pages. ‘I see,’ I said, ‘that your story as written is laid largely in Spain in the summer. I shall ask you to alter this to Switzerland and make it winter time to allow for the breaking of steam-pipes. Such things as these, however, are mere details; we can easily arrange them.’

I reached out my hand.

‘And now,’ I said, ‘I must wish you a good afternoon.’

The contributor seemed to pluck up courage.

‘What about remuneration’ – he faltered.

I waived the question gravely aside. ‘You will, of course, be duly paid at our usual rate. You receive a cheque two years after publication. It will cover all your necessary expenses, including ink, paper, string, sealing-wax and other incidentals, in addition to which we hope to be able to make you a compensation for your time on a reasonable basis per hour. Good-bye.’

He left, and I could hear them throwing him downstairs.

Then I sat down, while my mind was on it, and wrote the advance notice of the story. It ran like this:

The author has lately leaped into immediate recognition as the greatest master of the short story in the American World. His style has a brio , a poise [349], a savoir faire , a je ne sais quoi [350], which stamps all his work with the cachet of literary superiority. The sum paid for the story of Dorothea Dashaway is said to be the largest ever paid for a single MS [351]. Every page palpitates with interest, and at the conclusion of this remarkable narrative the reader lays down the page in utter bewilderment, to turn perhaps to the almost equally marvellous illustration of Messrs. Spiggott and Fawcett’s Home Plumbing Device Exposition which adorns the same number of the great review.

I wrote this out, rang the bell, and was just beginning to say to the secretary —

‘My dear child, – pray pardon my forgetfulness. You must be famished for lunch. Will you permit me—’

And then I woke up – at the wrong minute, as one always does.

Let me begin with a sort of parable. Many years ago when I was on the staff of a great public school, we engaged a new swimming master.

He was the most successful man in that capacity that we had had for years.

Then one day it was discovered that he couldn’t swim.

He was standing at the edge of the swimming tank explaining the breast stroke to the boys in the water.

He lost his balance and fell in. He was drowned.

Or no, he wasn’t drowned, I remember, – he was rescued by some of the pupils whom he had taught to swim.

After he was resuscitated by the boys – it was one of the things he had taught them – the school dismissed him.

Then some of the boys who were sorry for him taught him how to swim, and he got a new job as a swimming master in another place.

But this time he was an utter failure. He swam well, but they said he couldn’t teach .

So his friends looked about to get him a new job. This was just at the time when the bicycle craze came in. They soon found the man a position as an instructor in bicycle riding. As he had never been on a bicycle in his life, he made an admirable teacher. He stood fast on the ground and said, ‘Now then, all you need is confidence.’

Then one day he got afraid that he might be found out. So he went out to a quiet place and got on a bicycle, at the top of a slope, to learn to ride it. The bicycle ran away with him. But for the skill and daring of one of his pupils, who saw him and rode after him, he would have been killed.

This story, as the reader sees, is endless. Suffice it to say that the man I speak of is now in an aviation school teaching people to fly. They say he is one of the best aviators that ever walked.

According to all the legends and story books, the principal factor in success is perseverance. Personally, I think there is nothing in it. If anything, the truth lies the other way.

There is an old motto that runs, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ This is nonsense. It ought to read, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit, at once.’

If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it. Try something else while there is yet time.

Let me illustrate this with a story.

I remember, long years ago, at a little school that I attended in the country, we had a schoolmaster, who used perpetually to write on the blackboard, in a copperplate hand, the motto that I have just quoted:

He wore plain clothes and had a hard, determined face. He was studying for some sort of preliminary medical examination, and was saving money for a medical course. Every now and then he went away to the city and tried the examination: and he always failed. Each time he came back, he would write up on the blackboard:

And always he looked grimmer and more determined than before. The strange thing was that, with all his industry and determination, he would break out every now and then into drunkenness, and lie round the tavern at the crossroads, and the school would be shut for two days. Then he came back, more fiercely resolute than ever. Even children could see that the man’s life was a fight. It was like the battle between Good and Evil in Milton’s [352]epics.

Well, after he had tried it four times, the schoolmaster at last passed the examination; and he went away to the city in a suit of store clothes, with eight hundred dollars that he had saved up, to study medicine. Now it happened that he had a brother who was not a bit like himself, but was a sort of ne’er-do-well, always hard-up and sponging on other people, and never working.