Twoscore of manuscripts were travelling the endless round of the magazines.

How did the others do it?
He spent long hours in the free reading-room, going over what others had written, studying their work eagerly and critically, comparing it with his own, and wondering, wondering, about the secret trick they had discovered which enabled them to sell their work.
He was amazed at the immense amount of printed stuff that was dead.

No light, no life, no color, was shot through it.

There was no breath of life in it, and yet it sold, at two cents a word, twenty dollars a thousand--the newspaper clipping had said so.

He was puzzled by countless short stories, written lightly and cleverly he confessed, but without vitality or reality.