DICK BEGINS TO WRITE A NOVEL.
“Come home,” was the order that Dick received in reply to his telegram
from Key West reporting himself there and asking for instructions.
He was very well satisfied with this, for various reasons. He was far
behind in his facts, although he had been writing, writing, as fast as
he could. While in Texas and on the Red River he had been writing still
about Hot Springs; and even in Key West he had not begun yet to do his
descriptions of New Orleans.
However, there was a weightier reason than this that made him desire to
go home. While on his travels the plot of a novel had somehow stolen
into his mind, and he had worked it out so far that he was anxious to
begin writing it.
“I certainly could not do anything toward putting it on paper while I
am traveling,” he said to himself. “My time is not my own now, anyhow,
but even if it were I should have no chance. I can’t help thinking
about it and working it out. The only way that I can ever write a novel
is to have the whole thing thoroughly in mind before I begin to write,
so that when I do write I shall know exactly what I am about.
“They say that novelists’ methods of work differ very much. Some men
begin to write with nothing but the main idea in their minds, and let
the thing develop as they go along. Those are the men who write and
rewrite, and cut and add and change, till at last there is hardly
anything left of the original. I know one celebrated writer who rewrote
a novel six times, and it was very bad when he finished it.
“That plan would not do for me. I must have everything perfectly mapped
out before I begin; so well in hand that I could write the last chapter
first, or the middle one, or do any scene or conversation without
reference to the rest. I don’t think it is because I am too lazy to
rewrite; more likely my newspaper training has taught me to gather all
my material up and sort it out before I pick up the pen.”
There was time to collect facts for several good articles in Key West
before he could start; for Key West is unique among cities. The most
southerly point in the United States, most of its inhabitants are
Cubans who work in the big cigar factories, and their ways of life are
distinctly Cuban. Then the isolated position of the place, on a tiny
island miles from the continent, makes it almost a land to itself, with
many strange customs not to be found elsewhere.
Dick found that he could return to New York either by the direct
steamer or by the Plant System boat to Tampa, and thence by rail up the
Atlantic Coast. He promptly chose the latter way, not only because it
was much faster, but also on account of the opportunity it gave him to
see more of the country.
“I cannot see too many places,” he reflected, “if I am going to write
novels; and I am certainly going to try. If I should have occasion to
write about Tampa or Jacksonville or Charleston or Richmond, it would
be necessary to know something about those places. This rail ride will
‘enlarge my field of action,’ as Darling would say.”
After a beautiful voyage up the smooth Gulf of Mexico the steamship
landed him in Tampa, and there he found a through train ready to carry
him to New York. For scores of miles through Florida the tracks ran
between orange groves; and as the trees were white with blossoms,
the air was perfumed with their delightful fragrance. Into Georgia
the train carried him, then across South Carolina, North Carolina,
Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, into Pennsylvania, and at last across New
Jersey to Jersey City. Washington was a sore temptation to him to stop,
for he felt that he ought to become familiar with the National Capital.
But none knew better than Dick that a newspaper’s order to “come home”
does not mean come next week, or the day after to-morrow, but come at
once. There might be work of the utmost importance waiting for him.
It was seven o’clock in the evening when the train arrived in Jersey
City, and Dick went directly to the Transport office to report his
return.
“Darling will be glad to see me back, anyhow,” he said to himself as he
sprang merrily up the stairs; “so will Dr. Goode. The doctor always has
a warm welcome for a fellow who’s been away on a journey. Three whole
months since I’ve seen any of the boys! There’ll be some new faces
among the reporters, I suppose. It’s funny to think that I’m one of the
‘old’ men now!”
He spoke to the office boys as he entered the big room, and hurried up
to the front to see Dr. Goode and the managing editor and the night
city editor and Darling. Jack Randall and Lawrence and two or three
others tried to stop him as he passed, but he waved his hand to them
and went on.
Something looked unfamiliar at the desks by the front windows. It took
him a second or two to grasp the situation and see that Darling was
sitting at the managing editor’s desk, and that Mr. Brown, the city
editor, was in Dr. Goode’s chair.
“Hello, Darling, old chap!” he exclaimed, putting out his hand; “what
are you doing here?”
“Be a little more respectful, if you please, in addressing your
managing editor!” Darling answered. “I can’t have reporters and
correspondents calling me ‘old chap’ in the office.” There was a sly
twinkle in Darling’s eye as he said it; and he gave Dick’s hand a
tremendous wrench.
“Managing editor!” Dick repeated. “You don’t say that you’re”--
“Oh, yes, I do,” Darling interrupted. “These little things happen
sometimes. The managing editor that was has gone to take charge of a
paper in Minneapolis, and I have been put in his place.”
“Shake again!” Dick exclaimed. “You the managing editor! Why that makes
you my boss, and you might send me out to do a fire to-night, if you
wanted to; but you’d better not. But where is the doctor? What is Mr.
Brown doing at his desk?”
Darling turned towards the papers in front of him and looked at them
hard.
“There is bad news as well as good, Dick,” he replied after a moment’s
pause. “Dear, old doctor! He”--
“What! he’s not sick, is he?” Dick interrupted. But the moisture in
Darling’s eyes was more eloquent than words. “O Darling! Oh, no, old
chap, you don’t mean it? He’s not”--
Darling sadly shook his head and fumbled among his papers. “A week ago
yesterday, Dick, we took him over to Greenwood. His poor old eyes will
never give him any more trouble in this world. All these things have
happened within a few days, and we wrote you about them; but I suppose
you left Key West before the letters arrived.”
Dick turned away without another word, for he would not trust his
voice in that cruel moment. Sadly he shook hands with Mr. Brown, then
looking toward Darling again, he said almost in a whisper:
“There is nothing for me to do to-night; I need not stay here. I--I
must go home. I will be up when you come home, Darling.”
As he walked quickly out of the big room Dick saw several new men, much
such young reporters as he once was, nudge each other and look at him.
He knew what that meant, for he had noticed it before. The youngsters
were saying to one another, “See that fellow! that’s Richard Sumner,
the man who’s been writing those letters from Mexico and the Southwest!”
Once he had been looking at the older men in the same admiring way; but
now that his own time had come it could not even make him smile. For
who was to tell him when he did good work, and point out weaknesses
in his style, or comfort him in trouble, or advise him, or do him a
thousand little kindnesses, with Dr. Goode lying over in Greenwood?
There was a warm welcome for him in the flat, and he did his best to
conceal his grief over Dr. Goode behind his satisfaction at Darling’s
promotion. That he could hardly realize any more than he could fully
realize that he should see his good friend no more.
“It’s too astonishing for a man to grasp so suddenly,” he said to his
mother and Florrie after the first volley of hugs and kisses. “Darling
is exactly the man for the place; exactly. But there were four or five
people between him and the managing editorship. However, they do those
things sometimes, as I have learned by experience.”
“You’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s now, Mr. Richard Sumner,” Florrie
laughed. “If you don’t do exactly as I want you to about everything,
I’ll have Harry reduce your salary or put you back at city work. I’ll
see that he keeps you busy.”
“I don’t think he can keep me any busier than I always am,” Dick,
retorted. “I’ve hardly had a minute to myself since I began work on
the Transport. But I want to begin some work for myself now, and I’m
remarkably glad that Darling is the man I’ll have to negotiate with.”
There was time to do at least part of an article between the supper and
the hour for Darling’s arrival, and Dick shut himself up and fell to
work as naturally as if he had not been away.
“Hello!” he exclaimed when he came to a short pause somewhere after
midnight. “I’d forgotten that I was in New York. I’ve been so engrossed
with writing about New Orleans and the levee and the Spanish fort and
St. Charles Street, that I seemed to be down there among the Creoles.”
He was always pleased when he found himself carried away with his
subject in this way; so completely saturated with it that he became
oblivious to his real surroundings. He liked to laugh with his funny
characters, and sometimes to drop a stray tear with the unfortunate
ones--when he was entirely alone.
When Darling came in, a little later now than before, because he had
to look over an early copy of the paper before leaving the office and
sometimes make a second edition, Dick was ready to join him in the
late supper. They had a long talk about Dr. Goode and everything that
happened in the office.
“I intended to have a confab with the managing editor as soon as I
got back, Darling,” Dick said after he had heard all the news; “but I
didn’t think my talk would be with you. You know what we were saying
some time ago about my writing--writing a novel. I have been reading as
much as I could while I was away, and I have the plot of a good story
in my mind. Pretty well worked up, too, so that when I begin to write
it I can go straight ahead.
“Now what I am most in need of is time to write. I have about a week’s
work to finish up the letters of my last trip, and of course I will
do that first. After that I want to get some time to myself, if I can
manage it. Mother was so economical while I was away that she has saved
more than half of my salary; and that with what I had saved before will
bring my fund up to nearly a thousand dollars in the bank. I can do
the actual writing of a novel in three months; and I feel as if I could
afford to ask for that much vacation from the office, without salary of
course. Now is the time for me to strike while my name is in the papers
so much.”
“You are quite right to strike while the iron is hot,” Darling replied.
“The kind of work you are doing now will not last always, as I told you
before; it never does with any man. But I think you can do better than
ask for a long vacation. I have never known a man to be given a long
vacation for such a purpose, and I should not like to begin with you in
making such a break. They all know how we stand toward each other, and
they would accuse me of favoritism at once if I did it. Why not go on
space, Dick?”
“On space?” Dick repeated. “I don’t see how that would help me any.”
“It would help me to help you,” Darling replied; “and of course I want
to help you as much as I can, though on the other hand I must do what
is best for the office. You wouldn’t ask me to show you favors that I
would not show to another man in your place.”
“Certainly not!” Dick exclaimed. “I wouldn’t accept them.”
“You can go on space as a special man, and I shall feel warranted in
paying you fifteen dollars a column. Of course in that case your salary
will stop, and you will be paid only for what you write, or the time
you are actually busy. That will leave you master of your own time to a
great extent. You might average perhaps three days a week for the paper
and three for yourself, and at that rate you could finish your novel in
six months. You know some of the space men make a great deal of money.
I think that will be better for you than to stop work entirely for
three months; and it will certainly be better for the office, because
we can call upon you whenever we need you.”
“I don’t know but you’re right about that, Darling,” Dick answered
after a little reflection. “It will seem strange at first not to have
the salary coming in regularly; but, then, three columns a week will
more than make up for it, and I think I ought to average that much.”
Dick had a great deal to think about when he went to bed an hour or two
before the sun rose. But the desire to write his novel was stronger
in his mind than anything else, except his grief over the loss of Dr.
Goode. He felt that his plot was a good one--original and bright. His
newspaper letters had met with great success; why should his novel not
do as well?
For the next week he toiled away, every afternoon and part of the
night, till his letters were finished. When the last one was done he
laid down his pen with some regret.
“Now for space work,” he said to himself, “and what I hope will be the
best work I have done yet. The novel is so thoroughly laid out that I
have nothing to do but write it. It may not go at all; it may fall flat
or be laughed at; but I am going to do my best with it. If I can write
one novel that will go, I can write more.”
He fell to work at it at once, stopping only when Darling gave him
special work to do for the office. At the end of a fortnight Darling
asked him how the novel was coming on.
“Oh, I’m learning!” he laughed. “I know more about novel-writing now
than I did two weeks ago, at any rate. Didn’t I tell you that I had
it all so well laid out in my mind that I had only to do the actual
writing? Well, I really believed that, which just shows how little I
knew about the trade. Why, Darling, I wrote the opening sentences a
dozen times before I got them to suit me! After the first two chapters
were done I saw how very much the whole opening scheme might be
improved, so I threw them away and began over again. I’m on my fifth
chapter now, but there’s hardly a line that has not been written two or
three times over.”
“I’m glad of that,” Darling said; “nothing but hard pulling will
produce good work. How much do you do every day?”
“Well, after I go down to the office to see whether I’m needed, I
do a thousand words in the afternoon. That is my regular afternoon’s
work. Then after dinner, with the whole night before me, I hope for two
thousand words more. You know I am a very rapid penman. But I don’t
push myself at night. If I’m not in the mood, I read for an hour or
two. That generally puts me in proper trim.”
“What do you read? Shakespeare?”
“No,” Dick replied; “never while I’m writing. He is a capital stimulant
at other times, but in the midst of writing I find he confuses me.
His heroic style is so totally different from the modern style
that there must be an interval between. No; at those times I want
a language nearer to the language I use myself, and I find it in
Thackeray--usually in Vanity Fair.”
“I have heard other writers say the same thing,” Darling acquiesced.
“A writer unconsciously imitates to some extent the style he has just
been reading. At least, so I understand; a managing editor, you know,
is a complicated machine for watching the news of the world and getting
it all into his own paper. He cannot be expected to be an expert in
literary style.”
“He is valuable as a signer of reporters’ checks,” Dick laughed;
“and when a man runs short of money in a distant city he is the most
important person in the world.”
The interruptions in the novel-writing were always provoking, but they
could not be avoided. Sometimes Dick was kept away for days at a time,
and on one occasion for a whole week. “Never mind, I’m fresh for a new
start,” he said to himself at such times, and took up the thread where
he had laid it down. Mrs. Sumner and Florrie took great pains to keep
the flat quiet while he was at work, for somehow, though he could write
newspaper articles with the whole office talking around him, the least
noise disturbed him when he was at work on his novel.
“Sh!” he heard one little girl say to another in the hall one day as
they passed the door of his flat; “don’t talk so loud, there’s a man
writing a book in there!” But he could not even smile just then, for he
was trying to work his way through a difficult situation.
Almost the only newspaper work that Dick really enjoyed while he was
engaged upon the novel came to him about the time that he had reached
the twelfth chapter; and perhaps the way that came to him had something
to do with his enjoyment of it. When he went into the office Darling
handed him a memorandum, and with the memorandum a brief note from the
editor-in-chief, not intended for Dick’s eyes.
“Send the best writer you have on this job,” the note said; “get Sumner
if possible.”
“This job” was to write a complete description of the working of the
New York Fire Department, and to do it properly Dick must go to an
engine-house and live there like a fireman till the engine was called
out to at least one fire; and then go out with it and help handle the
hose. To be allowed to do this he must go first to the department
headquarters in Mercer Street and get a permit.
“That is very nice in the old man to call me the best writer in the
office,” he said to Darling. “I only hope the publishers will think so
when I send them my novel.” He said nothing about the note to any one
else, except his mother and Florrie, but he thought about it a great
deal. “The best writer in the office! And the Transport is everywhere
admitted to be the best written newspaper in America!”
He could not help feeling elated over such a compliment as he rode up
to Mercer Street. “Here, Dick!” he kept saying to himself; “Dick, wash
the rollers!” “Dick, come here!” and then by contrast, “Send the best
writer in the office; get Sumner if possible.” But experience had given
a veneering to his exterior, and he would not for any money have let
his companions know that he gave the note a second thought.
“I think we had better send you down to Number Four in Liberty Street,”
the chief of the fire department said when Dick made known his mission.
“There are a great many fires in that district, and Number Four is the
headquarters of the chief of the First Battalion. He can give you the
information you require.”
The chief wrote out an order to the foreman of Number Four, directing
him to “allow Mr. Richard Sumner to remain in the engine-house for
forty-eight hours, or longer if he desires; give him all possible
information and allow him to accompany the apparatus to fires.” It was
such an order as only the representative of a first-rate newspaper
could have obtained.
When Dick arrived at the Number Four engine-house in Liberty Street,
opposite the site of the old postoffice, next morning, he was politely
received by the foreman of the company, and by the chief of the First
Battalion. He saw on the ground floor of the building a beautiful fire
engine, resplendent with polished brass, and by its side the tender,
with its reel of hose. At the rear were three stalls with fine large
horses in them; and near the centre was a smooth pole running up to the
upper stories of the building through hatchways cut in the floors.
“So you are going to be a fireman for a few days, are you?” the
battalion chief asked as he read Dick’s order. “Well, you will find it
exciting work if we happen to have a good fire. And you’ll have to step
around pretty fast, to go out with the apparatus. Come upstairs with
me and I will show you first where the men live.”
Dick and the chief were crossing the floor of the big room toward the
stairway when there came a terrible clatter.
“Tap-tap-tap!” rang a big gong almost over their heads.
“Tap-tap-tap!” rang a smaller gong in the rear by the horses.
Instantly there was a rush of men and horses across the floor toward
the engine and tender.
“Look out! Dodge the horses!” the chief shouted; and at the same moment
he seized Dick by the arm and dragged him to the foot of the stairs,
out of the way.
It was none too soon either; for the next second the three powerful
horses dashed past like the wind and took their places, one on either
side of the pole of the engine and the third between the shafts of the
tender. The harness lay ready on their backs, and Dick noticed that men
were already at their stations to snap the springs that attached the
horses to the apparatus. But what a rush it was! In another second the
driver was in his seat in the front of the engine, and the engineer and
his assistant were on a platform at the rear. A driver and six firemen
were on the tender, and each driver had the reins in his hands, ready
for a dash. One man stood by the big folding doors in front, his hand
on the latch, ready to throw them open. Every man was in uniform, and
every man knew just where to go. Dick took it all in, though the whole
thing took less than ten seconds.
“Tap-tap!” said both bells again; and the drivers jumped down from
their seats, the horses were unfastened and trotted back to their
stalls; it was all over.
“What does that mean?” Dick asked. “If there is a fire, why doesn’t the
engine go?”
“Because it was not one of our numbers,” the chief explained. “It was
a genuine alarm of fire, but not in our district. Of course every
engine in the city does not go to every fire; each engine goes only to
the fires in its own district, and we know where the fire is by the
number of taps. But every engine in the city is manned and made ready
to go out whenever an alarm comes. You see we cannot tell when the bell
begins to tap whether it is going to be one of our numbers or not. For
instance, the gong just struck three and two--thirty-two. That station
is away up in Harlem, and we could hardly reach it in an hour. But the
gong might have gone on and added four to the thirty-two, making 324.
That would have been one of our stations, and we would have gone out.
You see we were all ready on the first tap for whatever might happen.”
“Well!” Dick exclaimed, “that is a very complete system. But what I
don’t understand is how the horses got out here so fast. I didn’t see
anybody touch them.”
“No!” the chief laughed; “no one touched them. But I shall have to
begin back at the fire itself to make that clear to you. For an easy
example, we will suppose that a fire is discovered in the Astor House,
and that somebody runs out and pulls the handle in the nearest alarm
box, which is at Vesey Street and Broadway. The number of that box
is 23, and the pulling of the handle immediately telegraphs ‘23’ to
the fire headquarters in Mercer Street. A clerk sits there by the
instrument, with a cabinet in front of him full of tiny drawers, each
drawer containing a little brass disk notched in the side to correspond
with the numbers. He takes out disk number 23 and drops it into a slot
prepared for it in another instrument, and presses a button. Quick as a
wink ‘23’ is telegraphed to every engine-house in the city.
“Now we come to the horses,” he continued. “That little flash of
electricity does a great deal of work. It not only taps the number on
our big gong, but at the same time it releases a weight which drops and
pulls back the bolts that fasten the horses in their stalls, and rings
a smaller gong over their heads. They are so used to the business that
the instant they hear the gong they know they are free, and they start
on a run for their places in front of the engine and tender. They know
where to go and what to do as well as the men.”
“I like to see the horses best of all!” Dick exclaimed
enthusiastically. “What noble fellows they are! But the whole thing is
very complete.”
“Oh, that is only a beginning,” the chief said. “Come upstairs now till
I show you where we live. You see this pole running up? It goes all the
way to the roof, and is for the men to slide down when they are in a
hurry. If they happen to be up above when an alarm comes, they don’t
think of using the stairs but slide down the pole. It is smooth and
perfectly safe. That’s what you will have to do if you want to catch
the engine at night. You saw how quickly everything is done. We go out
of the door in ten or eleven seconds after the first tap of the bell,
day or night, and you’d never catch us if you waited for the stairs. If
you get there in time, jump right up on the ash-box with the engineer
and fireman at the rear of the engine. We can’t wait for you, you know.”
Dick looked critically at the slippery pole and the distance to the
ground floor.
“I’ll be there,” he said confidently. “I can go down that pole as fast
as anybody.”
“Now here is where the men sleep,” the chief went on; “here in the
third story. Each man has his little iron bed and”--
“Tap-tap!” said the great gong and a smaller one up in the
sleeping-room.
Dick did not wait for the third tap. He knew that the engine might be
out of the house in ten seconds, and it was his duty to catch it.
He sprang for the pole, threw his arms around it, and slid down to the
ground floor as if he had been shot out of a cannon. In a fraction of a
second more he was in his place on the ash-box of the engine.
But there was none of the commotion below that he had expected to see.
Instead, there came a clapping of hands and some laughter and shouts
of,--
“Bravo, reporter! you’re on time!”
“Good for the newspaper man!”
“The Transport never gets left, does it?”
“You’ll do for a fireman,” said the foreman, trying hard not to laugh;
“but that bell was only the twelve o’clock time signal. We don’t go out
for that.”