Just to show you, I wrote half a dozen jokes last night for the comic weeklies; and just as I was going to bed, the thought struck me to try my hand at a triolet--a humorous one; and inside an hour I had written four.

They ought to be worth a dollar apiece.

Four dollars right there for a few afterthoughts on the way to bed." "Of course it's all valueless, just so much dull and sordid plodding; but it is no more dull and sordid than keeping books at sixty dollars a month, adding up endless columns of meaningless figures until one dies.
And furthermore, the hack-work keeps me in touch with things literary and gives me time to try bigger things." "But what good are these bigger-things, these masterpieces ?" Ruth demanded.

"You can't sell them." "Oh, yes, I can," he began; but she interrupted.
"All those you named, and which you say yourself are good--you have not sold any of them.

We can't get married on masterpieces that won't sell." "Then we'll get married on triolets that will sell," he asserted stoutly, putting his arm around her and drawing a very unresponsive sweetheart toward him.
"Listen to this," he went on in attempted gayety.