Then two humorous poems had earned two dollars and three dollars respectively.

As a result, having exhausted his credit with the tradesmen (though he had increased his credit with the grocer to five dollars), his wheel and suit of clothes went back to the pawnbroker.
The type-writer people were again clamoring for money, insistently pointing out that according to the agreement rent was to be paid strictly in advance.
Encouraged by his several small sales, Martin went back to hack-work.
Perhaps there was a living in it, after all.

Stored away under his table were the twenty storiettes which had been rejected by the newspaper short- story syndicate.

He read them over in order to find out how not to write newspaper storiettes, and so doing, reasoned out the perfect formula.

He found that the newspaper storiette should never be tragic, should never end unhappily, and should never contain beauty of language, subtlety of thought, nor real delicacy of sentiment.