My maiden effort Author:Gelett Burgess Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I had completely worn out two rhyming dictionaries, which fact must serve for my excuse. From the short story to the long story is but a step. I stepped. And ... more »since then I've kept stepping, if no higher, a durned sight further! Today, although Mr. Rockefeller's supply of crackers has never been seriously interfered with by me, I have one compensation that never fails me. Any old day, if I happen to have the price, I can go to the art gallery and gaze pityingly at what I see there, happy in the knowledge that, had I pursued the path along which my faltering steps first led, some folks of whom I wot would be in the bread line today! As I said before, I will not state positively that Harry Leon Wilson is personally to blame in this matter; but in case these lines should ever meet his eyes I add more in sorrow than in anger the words of the poet: "You made me what I am today: I hope you're satisfied." REX BEACH " "M Balden Effort" is not a good descriptive title for the ly I first stuff I wrote. There was no effort connected with it, since I merely stole some ideas from my favorite authors and improved upon them. I must have been about eleven years old when I committed my first plagiarism; anyhow I was attending public school in Florida or Illinois or somewhere. I attended some of the most exclusive public schools in both states as long as they could bear me. It was a so-called "composition," same being a part of the mental gymnastics connected with the elementary study of English. Pride in my first literary accomplishment induces me to leave off the prefix which the story deserved. It was a modest little thing, done after the best style of Jules Verne. In it I led the breathless members of my class on a trip to the moon. Fair, for a beginner. I seem to remember...« less