Letting me down gently

I have gotten some great rejections lately---- rejections, great or not, are a writer's first experience, and until you are at the level of Steven King or Robert B. Parker you are just going to have them as a part of your everyday world.

But the last three or four in a row have had a much different tone than I am used to. The one I got today made me laugh out loud:

Hi. I really enjoyed your story. If only we'd gotten a dozen more this good. But we didn't. As a result, Lodestone has been put on hold. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I hoped to get some good submissions between now and when you submitted, but didn't.

Drew

True or not, this is almost at the level of the apochryphal rejection from a Japanese magazine where the editor declined because printing it would be so close to the ultimate expression on the topic that printing any other story after would be unnecesary.