One slot brought checks and the other brought rejection slips.

So far he had found only the latter slot.
It was the rejection slips that completed the horrible machinelikeness of the process.

These slips were printed in stereotyped forms and he had received hundreds of them--as many as a dozen or more on each of his earlier manuscripts.

If he had received one line, one personal line, along with one rejection of all his rejections, he would have been cheered.

But not one editor had given that proof of existence.