Quote 232 of 495

Almost as soon as I had sent off a poem to The New
Yorker, it would be back in our mailbox in Berlin.  The postal
service was, of course, incomparably faster than it is at present;
even so, the magazine appeared to have devised some extra-speedy
method of returning my contributions.  My poems would be accompanied
by the same rejection slip that the magazine uses today; it reads, "We
regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material.  Thank you for
giving us the opportunity to consider it," and it is signed "The
Editors."  Very civil; moreover, in the margin of the stationery upon
which the message of reject is printed appears the Roman numeral "I."
Naturally, I assumed that I was receiving the editors' Number One
Rejection Slip and I flattered and consoled myself with the
supposition that less talented would-be contributors were receiving
the Number Two and perhaps even the Number Three Rejection Slip.
Later, I discovered that everyone who submitted a piece to the
magazine followed a similar process of deduction and
self-congratulation in respect to that mysterious "I."  In fact, it is
on every rejection slip and it is meaningless; nobody in the office
remembers now why it happens to be there.
		-- Brendan Gill, Here at the New Yorker,
		   p. 84

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