Autobiographical Fragment

Abstract

I had begun to write and had been for quite a time a solitary person, and, for quite a time, a solitary writer. When I had finished something that pleased me, a short story, a few verses, I would put such into an envelope, and drop it into the letter-box of Arthur Griffith’s weekly paper. I dropped these into the editor’s letter-box with my name duly signed, but with no address given, for I was certain that, while he would delight in my writings he could not possibly bother about who I was or what I looked like, or where I lived. Then, the week after, I would buy my pennyworth of that paper, and gloat over my contribution to it, admiring my vocabulary, which said, within reason, almost anything I demanded of it, astounded at the grammar which I had never striven for, and yet was mine, but more admiring, more astounded yet, at the fact that my matters were accepted by the great editor, and that everything I sent him was printed the very week next after its receipt.