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Facsimile retrieved from Google Newspaper Archives
See Editorial Principles.
Leean is an Honours English language and literature student at the University of British Columbia and a research assistant for
See the Biographical Timeline for biographical information on Winnifred Eaton.
Joey Takeda is the Technical Director of
First published in Calgary, Alberta in 1883, now known as the
A Japanese Nightingale.
(Mrs. Reeve is now living on a ranch at Morley and is in the midst of several important literary endeavors).
By Onoto Watanna (Mrs. Winnifred Reeve) author of A Japanese Nightingale
.
I was eighteen years old. I had received a letter from Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, then
editor of Frank Leslie’s (now editor of the Atlantic Monthly). Instead of the usual
rejection slip, he wrote expressing an interest in me, and suggested that I should
let him see anything else you have written
.
Upon my arrival in New York, I did not wait to secure lodgings. I went straight from
the train, bag in hand, to Mr. Sedgwick’s office. Having explained to him who I
was—he appeared to have forgotten that letter he had written me—I said: And you
wrote me to let you see anything else I had written, and so…
I opened my bag. He leaped to his feet, threw up his hands, and shouted:
Help! Help!
In rushed half a dozen editors and clerks, and the wild-looking Mr. Sedgwick pointed dramatically to that bag of mine, which was brim full to the top with manuscripts. With a vague idea that I was about to be arrested, I burst into tears. I bawled as hard and heartily as only a husky youngster can, with the result that outrageous mirth was checked, and Mr. Sedgwick alternately wringing his hands and running them through his hair implored me to stop weeping. He said:
Don’t cry! Don’t cry! Don’t cry like that! Stop it! I’ll buy a story from you if
you will. I’ll buy all your stories if you do. There, there, no one’s going to
hurt you. Shut up, do!
In later years, when Mr. Sedgwick and I would meet at intervals, he liked to recall the several amusing episodes he recalled in my past, and he told our friends that I had blackmailed him with tears into buying my first story.