For each of these contributions Selma was to receive eight dollars--four hundred a year, which she hoped to expand to a thousand by creative literary production--preferably essays and poetry. She hired a room in the same neighborhood as Mrs. Earle, in the boarding-house district appurtenant to Central Avenue--that is to say, on the ragged edge of Benham's social artery, and set up her new household gods. The interest of preparing the first paper absorbed her to the exclusion of everything else. She visited all the dress-making and dry-goods establishments in town, examined, at a hint from Mrs. Earle, the fashion departments of the New York papers, and then, pen in hand, gave herself up to her subject. The result seemed to her a happy blending of timely philosophy and suggestions as to toilette, and she took it in person to the editor. He saw fit to read it on the spot. His brow wrinkled at first and he looked dubious. He re-read it and said with some gusto, "It's a novelty, but I guess they'll like it. Our women readers have been used to fashion notes which are crisp and to the point, and the big houses expect to have attention called to the goods they wish to sell. If you'll run over this again and set your cold facts in little paragraphs by themselves every now and then, I shouldn't wonder if the rest were a sort of lecture course which will catch them. It's a good idea. Next time you could work in a pathetic story--some references to a dead baby--verses--anecdotes--a little variety. You perceive the idea?"
"Oh, yes," said Selma, appropriately sober at the allusion yet ecstatic. "That's just what I should like to do. It would give me more scope. I wish my articles to be of real use--to help people to live better, and to dress better."
"That's right, that's right; and if they make the paper sell, we'll know that folks like them," responded the editor with Delphic urbanity.
The first article was a success. That is, Selma's method was not interfered with, and she had the satisfaction of reading in the _Sentinel_ during the week an item calling gratified attention to the change in its "What Women Wear" column, and indicating that it would contain new features from week to week. It gave her a pleasant thrill to see her name, "Selma White," signed at the end of the printed column, and she set to work eagerly to carry out the editor's suggestions. At the same time she tried her hand at a short story--the story of an American girl who went to Paris to study art, refused to alter her mode of life to suit foreign ideas of female propriety, displayed exceptional talent as an artist, and finally married a fine-spirited young American, to the utter discomfiture of a French member of the nobility, who had begun by insulting her and ended with making her an offer of marriage. This she sent to the _Eagle_, the other Benham newspaper, for its Sunday edition.