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Harry Harcourt had long been a success in his own line of light literature. And his line was a trunk line with spurs in any number of directions. His acquaintances called him a free-lance when they spoke to him and a hack-writer when they spoke of him.

But, to be accurate, he was neither. He was simply a manufacturer and vendor of marketable light-literary merchandise, and he thoroughly understood his business. After a studious and hard-working apprenticeship, he had now reached the place where he could turn off a sonnet, a short story or a special article with that peculiar touch about it which makes it acceptable to any editor. He was as versatile as Kipling, as prolific as Cyrus T. Brady, and as sure of having his work accepted as C.D. Gibson or T. Roosevelt.

Of course, the financial result of this state of things was a comfortable competency, though perhaps not affluence. But Harry Harcourt was not ambitious. The best rates of the best periodicals were good enough for him, and he lived happily with his wife and children in a small suburban town, and occasionally ran over to the city for a breath of “hot air,” as he expressed it in his light-literary way.

Harcourt was a methodical man. Indeed, it was to this trait that he attributed his success. In the preface of his career he had systematized his work. He had reduced all jokes to common denominators, and discovered that the skeletons of all short stories looked alike. He had classified tables of jests, ready for instant use. They were alphabetically arranged, as: Appendicitis, Bernard Shaw, Chauffeurs, Divorce, and so on. Moreover, he was always on time. In January he wrote his summer-girl verses, his Fourth of July jokes, and his articles on “The Advantages of the City as a Summer Resort.” In June he wrote his Christmas ballads and his jests on New Year resolutions.

He worked at his desk every day from nine till one, his copy was always neat and clean, and his return envelopes carefully stamped and addressed. They were rarely used, for he kept his trained finger on the editorial pulse, and most of his stuff was accepted on its first offer.

So all was well, and as we may deduce, there was not a fly in Harry Harcourt’s light-literary ointment.

But suddenly and with no apparent reason things began to change. One day a manuscript was returned to him in his own neat return-envelope. Though unusual, this was not absolutely unprecedented, and it caused Harcourt only a momentary surprise, after which he sent it off again to the next most desirable editor. But next day two more manuscripts came back to him, and the day after another. After this, he began to have nearly as many rejections as acceptances, then just as many, and then more.

The sensation in Harcourt’s mind regarding this phenomenon was not disappointment, discouragement, dismay or despair. It was a healthy intelligent curiosity as to what the dickens it all meant. He knew his market and his work too well to think for a moment that one was overcrowded or the other inferior. There must be a reason, he knew—a good reason—and he determined to find it. He was in that peculiar stage where an author is both too successful and not successful enough to march boldly to his editors and ask explanation. So he puzzled over it himself, but he couldn’t solve the mystery. And matters grew worse. His stuff was selling so poorly that his bank account was seriously threatened.

Something must be done; but what? He thought of Dr. Osler’s theory, and wondered if he ought to be chloroformed. He didn’t feel that he ought to be, but he wrote a humorous poem on the thought, as was his wont on all such thoughts. The poem was returned to him with printed thanks, and again he was mildly surprised and deeply mystified.

He was thinking it all over one day, when his friend Jack Norton came into the library. Norton was a well-to-do man, and consequently was in automobile togs.

“I say, Harcourt,” he said, “lend me your horse and gig, will you, to tow my machine around to the garage?”

“Sure!” said Harcourt. “What’s the matter this time?”

“Needle-valve worked loose, and I’ve a choked carburetor,” explained Norton. “I thought I’d tinker it up myself—been supining under the old thing for half an hour, but it’s no go for either of us. Thanks awfully for your gig. By the way, old man, what’s up with you? You look as seedy as seed.”

“I am!” suddenly exclaimed Harcourt, and then in a burst of confidence he told his friend of his troubles. “There must be some reason.” He concluded. “Of course you don’t understand, Norton; but I know the stuff I write is just as good, and better, than what I’ve always done.”

“It is queer,” said Norton, his jolly face grave at the tale of his friend’s woe. “I’ll tell you, Harry, the trouble must be purely mechanical. Get down under your desk on your back and gaze up into your apparatus. Test everything, and you’re bound to come across the trouble, whether you can fix it or not, ta-ta, old man.”

Harcourt looked after his friend’s vanishing raincoat, and from sheer force of habit ruminated on his words to see if they could be used as material. As he ruminated, the solution of his own problem flashed upon him.

All at once he understood why his jokes had been rejected, his stories returned, his verses sent back. And as he realized the truth, he turned ghastly pale and bowed his head in his hands. Thus his wife found him, as she tripped blithely in to ask for a little shopping money.

“Harry!” she cried, “what in the world is the matter?”

“Matter enough! I am ruined!” he replied, in a melodramatic atmosphere.

“Ruined? Why? How?” and bravely renouncing her shopping expedition, Mrs. Harcourt sat down beside her husband.

“I don’t often bother you with business details, Ethel,” Harcourt began; “but I can tell you in a few words why I don’t and can’t sell any more manuscripts.”

Ethel didn’t say “Why?” she just looked at him, knowing he’d go on.

“Because,” he continued, “the only thing the editors buy nowadays is automobile stuff. Whether it’s a joke, jingle, short story or book, it must be about automobiles, and written in their crazy jargon. The hero must wear automobile togs, and the heroine a motor cap held on with a shirred chiffon veil. Then the intricacies of the machinery must be detailed ad nauseam, and incidentally a little fool love story shows its nose every thirty-eight pages. Oh, I know the trouble with my stuff now! It’s back numbers, Osler, appendicitis, cruelty to animals, dialect stories, nature books—all the legitimate subjects are knocked out by an automobilization of forces.”

“Well, deary, can’t you write automobile jokes and stories too?”

“No! I can’t write about the confounded things, when I don’t know a carburetor valve from a spark plug. And I can’t afford to buy one, and I couldn’t afford to take the time to learn it and to run it if I did. And we’d probably both get killed anyway, and then what would become of the children?”

“If we could only afford to get one, perhaps I could learn to run it and then I could tell you the technical terms,” said Ethel sympathetically.

“No, you’d get them all wrong, and besides you couldn’t crawl under the thing and spend the day—you’d spoil your clothes. And then, I tell you, I can’t afford to buy one. To buy one means to buy a more expensive one every succeeding year. And the way my work has been going lately I’m just about broke as it is.”

“Are you sure you can’t write about them without owning one?”

“Of course I can’t. You have to know just how the cones of the countershaft affect the leverage and foolishness like that. And I don’t know!”

“Do the editors know?” asked Mrs. Harcourt softly.

Her husband looked at her. “By Jove, Ethel!” he cried, “you’re a wonder! You saved my life. Of course they don’t.

“And so,” the pretty voice went on. You could at least write jokes and jingles about automobiles.”

“I can do more than that!” cried Harcourt. “I can see it all now. I must have been wool-gathering not to have seen it long ago. I’ll write short stories—yes, even serials and books. And I’ll lift the jargon from the best-selling stuff in the market. Clear out, Ethel dear! I’ll see you at dinner. But now I must systematize this thing.”

With happy alacrity Harcourt took an indexed blank book from a pile of new ones in his supply closet. Then getting together a number of recent automobile novels, he quickly recorded such terms as “lowered the sprag,” “advance sparking lever,” “taking out the inlet,” “cotton-waste in the tool-box,” “back-kick,’ and “speedometer.” Then growing bolder, he appropriated whole phrases, such as, “If the aspiration-pipe works loose, the vapor can’t get from the carburetor to the explosion chamber,” and “If the connecting-rod that works the magnet gets out of adjustment, the timing of the explosions will be wrong.”

He was not always able to understand why there should be worms in the steering-gear, and why a jockey-pulley should be provided for the purpose of breaking belts, but all these things went into his indexed notebook in alphabetical order.

Then to work! He took his original “skeletons” of jests and fitted them out with his new gear. The “Mother-in-Law” joke was done up in a dozen ways, all relating to the easy destruction of one’s mother-in-law by an automobile. The “Irate Father” joke, the “Tramp Sawing Wood’ joke, the “Little Brother,” the “Young Wife, the “Minister’s Call,” all were worked over the automobile allusions. Writing with feverish haste, Harcourt soon had a large bundle of these ready.

Verse came next. Ballads were easy, “Where is the auto of yesteryear?” made a fine refrain. Sonnets, limericks, all styles of meter, flowed swiftly from his trained and facile pen.

Then short stories. All the stories recently returned to him were remodeled with no trouble at all. The plot and characters were kept intact, the local color shifted to some place outside for automobiling, and the whole thickly sprinkled with phrases from the notebook.

The scheme worked well, as he knew it would. Everything he sent out was accepted and his output was limited only by the time necessary to write the manuscripts properly. Soon Harcourt was rich enough to buy an automobile.

“But we don’t want one, do we?” he said to his wife.

“No, indeed,” she replied, shuddering at the thought. “It would be like a merchant riding in his delivery wagon. “We’ll take a sailing trip on the Mediterranean, and while we’re doing that you can write a novel about a motor trip through Normandy, and publish it over both our names.”

“Just the thing,” cried Harcourt, and we can get post-cards down at the post-card shop, for illustrations photographed en route.”