Not much of an exalted vocation, the selling of photographs? Not, perhaps, proclaimed from the housetops as a handsomely paying vocation; but one which may be cultivated into almost anything having to do with inveigling publishers into writing cheques.

When you receive your first cheque your sensation is something like that of the man who has pa.s.sed through a cyclone and has come through with his "flivver" still in the barn. But when the first contribution is _printed_! The world is yours! You have broken into print! If not into type, at least into printing-ink.

When the excitement wears off there are many branches that beckon. The press-photographer may specialise--he may devote all his efforts to some one branch of the work, as the making of photographs of celebrities, of microphotographs, of almost anything. Witness the amateur photographer who quietly went about photographing the interior of every church in New York, and who then "cashed in" on them to the amount of $4,000. You may even obtain a position--or job--as press-photographer on a big metropolitan daily, with all the world before you and part of it dropping every Sat.u.r.day afternoon into your pocketbook.

Then, you may be sent overseas--and be paid great oodles of money. Or you may devote all your time to the making of calendar-photographs, or to ill.u.s.trating stories photographically, as is the fashion now with some magazines, see _True-Story_. There are so many opportunities to grasp that if you look about you and select the specialised branch in which you desire most to work, there is no reason in the world why you should not do it--and, perhaps, earn $10,000 a year at it. "Do one thing better than anyone else and the world will beat a path to your door."

Having broken into printers'-ink, it is comparatively easy to break into type. From selling photographs one may easily advance to the writing and ill.u.s.trating of non-fiction. And your fame as a non-fictionist, together with the training you have gleaned, may cause you to forward a work of fiction to an editor acquainted with your name--and lo! from the ranks of the "snap-shooters" you have risen to the highest cla.s.s of scribe--the successful fictionist.

And that, too, is not difficult for him who wills and works. "And work.

Spell it in capital letters, WORK," advised Jack London. "Work all the time. Find out about this earth, this universe; this force and matter, and the spirit that glimmers up through force and matter from the maggot to G.o.dhead. And by all this I mean work for a philosophy of life. It does not hurt how wrong your philosophy of life may be, so long as you have one and have it well.... With it you may cleave to greatness and sit among the giants."

Another agrees: "Draw long breaths of confidence, of faith in yourself and your work.... Strike 'despair' out of your dictionary! Get into your chair! Do your stint! Be just as much of a fool as you like. It is your privilege and mine. Then you will have amusing reminiscences. No great writer but can look back and say, 'What a fool I was!'"

Realisation results from "ten per cent. inspiration and ninety per cent. perspiration." A liberal quant.i.ty of this mixture will bring one to the High Road. The High Road is smooth. But anyone may travel it who wishes--and works sufficiently hard. Not much, the making and selling of photographs? The start of the trail may be barren and unpromising; but the persevering fellow who follows it persistently will find that it suddenly widens and blossoms and lo, opens full into the High Road.

THE END