The Fiction Factory

John Milton and his wife lived in Chicago, and the firm for which John Milton worked had managed to keep afloat by having an account in two banks. When a note fell due at one bank, the firm borrowed from the other to pay it. Thus, by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and from Paul to pay Peter, the contractors juggled with their credit and kept it good. Times were hard enough in all truth, yet they were not so hard in Chicago as in other parts of the country. The World's Columbian Exposition brought a flood of visitors to the city, and a flood of cash.

"Bother the panic!" jeered Mrs. Edwards. "It won't interfere with your work. Pleasant fiction is more soothing than hard facts. People will read all the more just to forget their troubles."

"I'm pretty solid with the firm," said John Milton, veering to another tack. "I'm getting twelve hundred a year, now, with an extra hundred for taking care of the Colonel's books."

"Is there any future to it?"

"There is. I can buy stock in the company, identify myself with it more and more, and in twenty or thirty years, perhaps, move into a brownstone front on Easy street."

"No, you couldn't!" declared Mrs. Edwards.

"Why not?"

"Why, because your heart wouldn't be in your work. Ever since you were old enough to know your own mind you have wanted to be a writer. When you were twelve years old you were publishing a little paper for boys – "

"It was a four-page paper about the size of lady's handkerchief," laughed John Milton, "and it lasted for two issues."

"Well," insisted his wife, "you've been writing stories more or less all your life, and if you are ever a success at anything it will be in the fiction line. You are now twenty-six years old, and if you make your mark as an author it's high time you were about it. Don't you think so? If I'm willing to chance it, John, you surely ought to be."

"All right," was the answer, "it's a 'go.'"

And thus it was that John Milton Edwards reached his momentous decision. Perhaps you, who read these words, have been wrestling soulfully with the same question – vacillating between authorship as a vocation or as an avocation. Edwards made his decision eighteen years ago. At that time conditions were different; and it is doubtful whether, had he faced conditions as they are now, he would have decided to run his Fiction Factory on full time.

"An eye for an eye."

A writer whose stories have been used in the Munsey publications, Pearson's and other magazines, writes:

"How is this as an illustration of timeliness, or the personal element in writing? – I went in to see Mr. Matthew White, Jr., one day with a story and he said he couldn't read it because he had a sore eye. I had an eye for that eye as fiction, so I sat down and wrote a story in two hours' time about an editor who couldn't read any stories on account of his bum lamp, whereby he nearly missed the best story for the year. Mr. White was interested in the story mainly because he had a sore eye himself and was in full sympathy with the hero. I took the story down and read it aloud to him, selling it, of course. The story was called, 'When the Editor's Eye Struck.'"

(Talk about making the most of your opportunities!)

The Bookman, somewhere, tells of a lady in the Middle West who caught the fiction fever and wrote in asking what price was paid for stories. To the reply that "$10 a thousand was paid for good stories" she made written response: "Why, it takes me a week to write one story, and $10 for a thousand weeks' work looks so discouraging that I guess I'd better try something else."

Poeta nascitur; non fit. This has been somewhat freely translated by one who should know, as "The poet is born; not paid."

II

AS THE TWIG

IS BENT

Edwards' earliest attempt at fiction was a dramatic effort. The play was in three acts, was entitled "Roderigo, the Pirate Chief," and was written at the age of 12. The young playwright was Roderigo, the play was given in the loft of the Edwards barn, and twenty-five pins was the price of admission (thirty if the pins were crooked). The neighborhood suffered a famine in pins for a week after the production of the play. The juvenile element clamored to have the performance repeated, but the patrons' parents blocked the move by bribing the company with a silver dollar. It was cheaper to pay over the dollar than to buy back several thousand pins at monopoly prices.

In 1881 "Simon Girty; or, The Border Boys of the West" was offered. The first performance (which was also the last) was given in Ottawa, Kansas, and the modest fee of admission was 5 cents. The play was very favorably received and might have had an extended run had not the mothers of the "border boys" discovered that they were killing Indians with blank cartridges. Gathering in force, the mothers stormed the barn and added a realistic climax to the fourth act by spanking Simon Girty and disarming his trusty "pards."

Shortly after this, the musty records show that Edwards turned from the drama to narrative fiction, and endeavored successfully to get into print. The following, copied from an engraved certificate, offers evidence of his budding aspirations:

Frank Leslie's

BOYS' AND GIRLS' WEEKLY

Award of Merit

This is to certify that John Milton Edwards,

Ottawa, Kansas, has been awarded Honorable

Mention for excellence in literary composition

New York, Oct. 30, 1882. Frank Leslie

This "honorable mention" from the publisher of a paper, which young Edwards looked forward to from week to week and read and re-read with fascination and delight, must have inoculated him for all time with the fiction virus. Forthwith he began publishing a story paper on a hektograph. Saturday was the day of publication, and the office of publication was the loft of the Edwards' barn. Even at that early day the author understood the advantage of holding "leave-offs"[1 - "Leave-off" – the place where a serial is broken, and the words "To be continued in our next" appear. Mr. Matthew White, Jr., Editor of the Argosy, is supposed to have coined the expression. At any rate, Mr. White has a great deal to do with "leave-offs" and ought to know what to call them.] in serial work. He was altogether too successful with his leave-offs, for his readers, gasping for the rest of the story and unable to wait for the next issue of the paper, mobbed the office and forced him, with a threat of dire things, to tell them the rest of the yarn in advance of publication. After that, of course, publication was unnecessary.

It was a problem with young Edwards, about this time, to secure enough blank paper for his scribbling needs. Two old ledgers, only partly filled with accounts fell into his hands, and he used them for his callow essays at authorship. He has those ledgers now, and derives considerable amusement in looking through them. They prove that he was far from being a prodigy, and reflect credit on him for whipping his slender talents into shape for at least a commercial success in later life. Consider this:

Scene III.

J. B. – We made a pretty good haul that time, Jim.

B. J. – Yes, I'd like to make a haul like that every night. We must have got about $50,000.

J. B. – Now we will go and get our boots blacked, then go and get us a suit of clothes, and then skip to the West Indies.

Here a $50,000 robbery had been committed and the thieves were calmly discussing getting their boots blacked and replenishing their wardrobe (one suit of clothes between them seems to have been enough) before taking to flight. Shades of Sherlock, how easily a boy of 12 makes business for the police department!

Or consider this gem from Act II. The aforesaid "J. B." and "B. J." have evidently been "pinched" while getting their boots blacked or while buying their suit of clothes:

J. B. – We're in the jug at last, Jim, and I'm afraid we'll be sentenced to be shot.

B. J. – Don't be discouraged, Bill.

Enter Sleek, the detective.

Sleek. – We've got you at last, eh?

J. B. – You'll never get the money, just the same.

Sleek. – We'll shoot you if you don't tell where it is like a dog.

Then here's something else which seems to prove that young Edwards occasionally fell into rhyme:

Oh, why cut down those forests,
Our forests old and grand?
And oh, why cheat the Indians
Out of all their land?
Enclosed by civilization,
Surrounded they by towns,
Calmly when this life is done
They seek their hunting-grounds!