Later on, when it no longer mattered, he learned that the associate editors and sub-editors augmented their salaries by supplying those paragraphs themselves.

The comic weeklies returned his jokes and humorous verse, and the light society verse he wrote for the large magazines found no abiding-place.

Then there was the newspaper storiette.

He knew that he could write better ones than were published.

Managing to obtain the addresses of two newspaper syndicates, he deluged them with storiettes.
When he had written twenty and failed to place one of them, he ceased.
And yet, from day to day, he read storiettes in the dailies and weeklies, scores and scores of storiettes, not one of which would compare with his.
In his despondency, he concluded that he had no judgment whatever, that he was hypnotized by what he wrote, and that he was a self-deluded pretender.
The inhuman editorial machine ran smoothly as ever.