I have travelled far in my life, travelled the seven seas by sail and
steam, and on horse and camel crossed plain and desert. The Pacific,
the Indies, the Arctic--I count over the coasts where my ships have
cast anchor; I go back in my memory to the first foreign shores on
which my eyes rested, and you perhaps will smile when I tell you that
they were the Jersey meadows. I saw them from a car window on a June
evening. The train had crossed the bridge at Newark, and below me in
the river lay ships--tiny coasters, I know now, but then in the dusk
magnified for me to the dignity of world-wanderers. In the salt vapors
of the marshes I scented the sea and the far-borne aroma of the
tropics, the lands of palm and spice, and I looked away to the
encircling hills and their scattered lights with something of the
exultation of Columbus when he spied the blazing torch which marked the
New World. This was a new world to me. I had known only the inland,
little valleys where life moved as placidly as the little rivers which
threaded them. Now the sight of mast and spar, the salt vapors, the
far-spread lights told me that I had come to a strange land, and I was
eager to reach its heart and to see its mysteries. I was keyed high
with the hope of conquest. With the salt marshes behind me, I left
behind me, too, the Old World, the little valleys, the placid streams,
and very straight I was, and very self-confident, when at last I looked
across the dark river to the towering shadow of the city, pierced by
its myriad stars. I felt neither fear nor loneliness. This city had
been building for these hundreds of years for just this hour. It
waited to receive me.
But the David Malcolm who stood bewildered in the streets was not the
conqueror who had stepped ashore from the ferry-boat. The life a
moment ago so precious had suddenly lost its value in the eyes of the
unknowing. Yesterday he had walked through Malcolmville, and every
man, woman and child in its straggling length had come out to bid him
farewell. His departure was an event. His arrival in these strange
streets was an event, but to him alone. His very existence was not
recognized save by those churlish souls with whom his awkwardness
brought him into physical contact. A belt-line car charged at him as
though it mattered little if he were ground beneath its wheels. A
truck hurled at him as though it were a positive blessing could the
world be rid of him. Plunging to safety, he bowled over a man who made
it perfectly plain that he regarded himself as just as important as
Malcolm of '91. Pausing on a corner with his shining suit-case at his
feet, he looked about him. Then he became in his own mind but another
ant in a giant hill.
I was lonely now, but I had no fear. I watched the unceasing flow of
life around me, and I said that I could move in it as boldly as any
man, and perhaps a little better than most men, and if the time came
when I must at last be caught beneath a belt-line car my removal from
these mad activities would at least be dignified by a notice in the
papers. The shrinkage to my self-importance added fire to my ambition.
More carefully but resolutely I threaded my way up Cortlandt Street,
and at every step my sense of my unimportance increased. Even my hotel
seemed to be a hotel of no importance. Mr. Pound had stayed there in
1876, and his account of its magnitude and luxury had led me to believe
that I could find it merely by asking. Three men met my simple inquiry
with shakes of the head and hurried brusquely on, and yet they were
respectable and intelligent-looking. The policeman at the Broadway
corner had at least heard of my hostelry; he remembered having seen it
when he first came on the force, but he was inclined to believe that it
had long since been torn down. This was discouraging, but I did not
abandon my search, for Mr. Pound had advised me to make myself known to
Mr. Wemple, the head clerk, a friend of his, who would doubtless be of
service to me. And now in my great loneliness I wanted to find not the
hotel, but Mr. Wemple, for I knew that with him I could talk on terms
of friendship, however frail. From the horse-car jogging up Broadway I
watched for the corner where the policeman told me the hotel had been;
I reached it and saw a tall building adorned by many golden signs,
inviting me not to the comfort of bed and board but to the purchase of
linens and hosiery. It was growing late. The part of the town through
which I was passing had put out its lights and gone home to bed, so I
had to abandon hope of finding Mr. Wemple, and turned into the first
hotel I saw, an imposing place with a broad window in which sat a
solemn, silent row of men gazing vacantly into the street.
Here at last I ended my journey, weary and lonely, without even Mr.
Wemple to welcome me to the city where I had cast my fortunes. Before
long I joined the solemn line and sat watching the street, and Broadway
below Union Square at night, even in those times, was not an enlivening
scene. My conquest was forgotten; my mind wandered back to the valley
at home. Here I sat listlessly, in a hot, narrow canyon through which
swept a thin, sluggish stream of life; above me was just a patch of
sky; before me was a tall cliff of steel and stone, pierced by
numberless dead windows. As I sat in the glare of electric lights, in
smoke-charged air, my ears ringing with the harsh medley of the street,
I fancied myself on the barn-bridge again. The moon would be rising
over the ridges and the valley would lie at my feet with its checkered
fields of brown and gray rolling away to the mountains, and the music
of the valley would be no harsh clatter of bells and hoofs; I should
hear the wind in the trees, the rustle of the ripening grain, the
whippoorwill calling from the elm by the creek, and the restless
bleating of sheep in the meadow. Thinking of these things, I asked
myself if the life I had left was not far better than the one I had
chosen; if the highest reward for my coming years of labor would not be
the right to return to it. But for pride I could have abandoned all my
mighty plans at that moment and gone back, even, as the Professor had
said, to doze like the very dogs. I dared not. My parents' joy at my
return might over-balance the loss of their high hopes for my fame, and
had they alone been in my thoughts I should have taken the night train
home. But I could not go back to Gladys Todd beaten before I had even
come to blows with life.
The last picture I had of her was the heroic one of a woman speeding
her knight to battle. Gladys had an embarrassing way of calling me
"her knight." She stood on the platform of the Harlansburg station,
and I leaned from a window of the moving train. Beside her was Doctor
Todd waving his hat, and behind her the three Miss Minnicks with
handkerchiefs fluttering. She was very straight and very still, but I
knew what was in her thoughts. She had faith in my strength; when she
saw me again my feet would be firmly set on the ladder by which men
climb above the heads of their herded fellows. In the hours of the
long journey the picture of her was very clear to me; I seemed to be
wearing her colors as I went to the conflict; with her spirit watching
over me, I could strike no mean blow nor use my strength in any
unworthy cause.
How glad I was that she could not see me now, as I sat in the hotel
window on two legs of my chair, with my feet on the brass rail, a
figure of dejection. The glamour of my great adventure was gone. I
had come quickly to the waste places of which the Professor had spoken.
When I closed my eyes to the noisome street and the clamor, when I saw
the pines on the ridge-top clear cut against the moonlit sky, when I
heard the whippoorwill calling from the elm and the sheep bleating in
the meadow, I believed that I was marching to barren conquests and
fighting for worthless booty. But I dared not turn back.
In the morning, however, I looked at that same street with different
eyes. The thin, sluggish stream of life had swollen to a mighty
current. The raucous little medley of the night was lost in the
thunders of the awakened city. The towering canyon was swept by the
brightest of suns. I seemed to be standing idle in the midst of the
conflict, and I was eager to plunge into it. So at noon that day I
began my fight. I presented myself at the editorial rooms of _The
Record_ and asked for Mr. Carmody. In my hand I held a letter to him
from Boller, recommending me in such high terms that it seemed highly
improbable that he could refuse me his good offices. To support
Boller's assertions as to my acquirements I had also letters from
Doctor Todd and Mr. Pound. According to Doctor Todd, the journal which
secured the services of David Malcolm was to be congratulated; he
recited my high achievements, my graduation with honors in the largest
class in the history of McGraw, my winning of the junior oratorical
contest with a remarkable oration on "Sweetness and Light." Mr. Pound
was less fulsome in his praises, for he was by nature a pessimistic
man, but he could vouch for my honesty, though, to be frank, he had
been disappointed by my abandoning my purpose to enter the ministry;
yet he had known me from infancy, he had had a little part in the
development of my mind, and he was confident that I needed but the
opportunity to make my mark in any profession.
With such support, my air when I asked for Mr. Carmody was naturally
one of assurance. The office-boy, an ancient man in the anteroom,
handed my card and Boller's letter to a very young assistant, and where
my eyes followed him through a door I saw a number of men seated at
battered desks. Some were writing; some were reading; some merely
smoking; some had their heads together and talked in low tones. All
were in their shirt-sleeves; and none presented the dignified
appearance of my conception of a journalist, and especially of so
successful a journalist as Mr. Bob Carmody. I was confident that the
very young office-boy would pass them and go to the doors beyond, which
must lead to the true sanctum. No; where he stopped I saw a
wide-spread paper; over the top of it a mop of flaming red hair, and
bulging from the sides of it the sleeves of a very pink shirt. The
curtain was lowered, disclosing a round, red face heavily blotched with
shaving-powder. There was nothing of dignity in Mr. Carmody's
appearance; there was nothing in his rotund features to suggest any
high purpose or distinguished ambition; indeed, it seemed that he would
be content to sit forever on that small chair at that battered desk.
He dropped the paper, looked at my card, and read Boller's letter.
Evidently it amused him, for the half-burned cigarette in his mouth
moved convulsively, and as he came toward me there sprang up in my mind
doubts as to Boller's estimate of him. But he proved a good-natured
young man and certainly very modest. Sitting on the ancient
office-boy's desk, he addressed me in low tones, as though he feared to
be overheard. He was glad to know any friend of Boller's, but
evidently Boller was laboring under a misapprehension as to his
importance. He disavowed having any influence. Had he the power,
nothing would delight him more than to give a friend of Boller a job.
I had never thought of myself hunting anything so commonplace as a job,
but as I listened to him and looked past him into the editorial room my
ideas of my chosen profession were rapidly readjusting themselves and I
was casting about for a way in which to continue my quest without the
influence on which I had counted so heavily. I protested that I had
never dreamed of him giving me a job; I had come to him simply for
advice, and perhaps an introduction to the real powers.
Mr. Carmody gave an uneasy glance over his shoulders to a large desk in
the corner, where sat a tall, thin man who seemed absorbed in a game of
checkers played with newspaper clippings. Mr. Hanks, the city editor,
he explained; nothing that he could say would have any influence on Mr.
Hanks. On my insisting, however, he at last consented to sound Mr.
Hanks on my behalf; he approached him with something of the caution he
would have used in confronting a tiger; he waved his hand to me to
assure me that all was well, and when I stood by the big desk he
disappeared, and it was many days before I saw him again.
There was nothing repelling in Mr. Hanks. Indeed, he seemed rather a
mild man, but when he turned on me a pair of large spectacles I felt
suddenly as though I were a curious insect being examined under
magnifying-glasses. Mr. Hanks, with his thin, pale face and
dishevelled hair, appeared more an entomologist than a militant editor.
In a moment, however, I saw him in action. He shot his bare arm across
the littered desk, he seemed to try to destroy his brass bell, and with
every ring he shouted, "Copy--copy!" Office-boys sprang from the floor
and dropped from the ceiling; they tumbled over one another in their
hurry to answer the summons. He reprimanded them for being asleep. I
thought that they would be ordered to bring Mr. Malcolm a chair, but
instead one received from a waving hand a bunch of paper, and they
retired as they had come, into the floor and the ceiling. I was under
the magnifying-glasses again.
"Well, Mr. Malcolm," said Mr. Hanks, leaning back in his chair and
clasping his hands behind his head, "ever done any newspaper work?"
"No, sir," I answered boldly. "I have just graduated from McGraw."
"And where in the devil is McGraw?" he asked in a slow, wondering voice.
How I wished for Doctor Todd! In five minutes this self-confident
journalist would blush for his own ignorance. But Doctor Todd not
being here to confound him with facts, there was nothing better for me
to do than to hand him the letter. His face lighted with a smile as he
read it. The effect was so good that I followed it with Mr. Pound's.
The effect of Mr. Pound's was so good that I was confident that I
should soon be a journalist in fact, for Mr. Hanks read it over twice.
"My boy," he began, regarding me through his spectacles benignly. At
that familiar address my heart leaped. "Let me give you some advice."
My heart fell. "Take those letters and lock them up to read when you
are ten years older. Then start out and go from office to office until
you get a place. Don't be discouraged. Some day you'll break in
somewhere."
"But I want to work on _The Record_," I cried. "It's politics agree
with mine--it is Republican. It is a respectable paper. It----"
Mr. Hanks was leaning over his desk. "Pile," he said, addressing the
fat man who sat across from him, "that was a good beat we had on the
Worthing divorce--I see all the evenings are after it hard. We must
have a second-day story."
"I am ready," I said a little louder, "to begin with any kind of work."
Mr. Hanks looked up as though surprised that I was still there.
"You've come at a bad time," he said brusquely. "Summer--we are
letting men go every day. But don't get discouraged. I worked four
months for my first job, and I didn't come from McGraw either. Keep
going the rounds."
Then he seemed to forget my existence and resumed his game of checkers.
His dismissal was a terrible blow, but I had read enough of great men
to know that they had to fight for their opportunities, and I was
determined not to be a weakling and go down in the first skirmish. For
a moment I stood bewildered at the entrance of _The Record_ building,
stunned by the unexpected outcome of my visit there. I was indignant
at Boller for having raised my hopes so high. I was indignant at Mr.
Carmody for not measuring up to Boller's estimate. I was indignant at
Mr. Hanks for not making a searching inquiry into my attainments, for
his ignorance of McGraw and his amusement over my precious letters. I
vowed that some day Mr. Hanks should be put under my magnifying-glass,
to shrivel beneath my burning gaze.
To break in somewhere proved a long task. From Miss Minion's
boarding-house on Seventeenth Street, where I established myself, I
went forth daily to the siege of Park Row. I was shot up to heaven to
editorial rooms beneath gilded domes, and as quickly shot down again.
I climbed to editorial rooms less exaltedly placed, up dark,
bewildering stairways which seemed devised to make approach by them a
peril. I soon knew the faces of all the city editors in town, and all
the head office-boys were as familiar with mine. At the end of the
first round I began to look more kindly on Mr. Hanks and to realize the
wisdom of his advice that I lock away my letters. I recalled the
varied receptions they had met, and when I started on my second round
they were hidden in my trunk. Repeated rebuffs had a salutary effect.
My egotism was reduced to a vanishing-point, my pride was quickened,
and with my pride my determination to accomplish my purpose. Even had
I lacked pride, I must have been nerved to my dogged persistence by the
memory of Gladys Todd with Doctor Todd and the three Miss Minnicks
speeding me to my triumphs. Every evening when I came home, tired and
discouraged, to Miss Minion's, I found a letter addressed to me in a
tall, angular hand--a very fat letter which seemed to promise a wealth
of news and encouragement. But Gladys Todd could say less on more
paper than I had believed possible. Encouragement she gave me, but
never news. News would have spoiled the graceful flow of her
sentences. Yet she was wonderfully good in the way she received my
accounts of my disappointments. She was prouder than ever of "her
knight"; her faith in him was firmer than ever; as she sat in the
evening, in the soft light of the lamp, she was thinking of me with
lance couched charging again and again against the embattled world.
At first in my replies I found a certain satisfaction in recounting my
defeats; for in fighting on I seemed to be proving my superior worth
and strength, and I became almost boastful of my repeated failures.
But the glamour of defeat wears off as the cause for which one fights
becomes more hopeless, and after a month I seemed farther than ever
from attaining my desire. I became depressed in the tone of my
letters, but as my spirits sank Gladys Todd's seemed to soar.
One particularly fat epistle I found on my bureau on an evening when I
was so discouraged that I was beginning to consider heeding my father's
appeal that I return home and study for the Middle County bar. I
opened it with dread. I wanted no comfort, but here in my hands were
twenty pages of Gladys Todd's faith in me and her pride in me. She was
sure that I should have the opportunity which I sought, and, having it,
would mount to the dizziest heights. She likened me to a crusader who
wore her colors and was charging single-handed against the gates of the
Holy City and shouting his defiance of the infidels who held it. It
was an exalted idea, but I remembered my tilt that afternoon with the
ancient office-boy of _The Record_, and his refusal to take my seventh
card to Mr. Hanks. The comparison was so absurd that I laughed as I
had not laughed in many days, and with the sudden up-welling of my
mirth, lonely mirth though it was, the blood which had grown sluggish
quickened, the drooping courage rose, I saw the world through clearer
eyes. The next afternoon when I faced the ancient office-boy the
remembrance of Gladys Todd's metaphor made me smile, and so overcome
was he by this unusual geniality that he did take in my card to Mr.
Hanks.
"Again," said Mr. Hanks, leaning back in his chair and surveying me
through his magnifying-glasses. "Young man, are you never going to
give me a rest?"
"Never," said I, smiling. "You advised me to go the rounds and not to
be discouraged."
"Have you got your letters with you?" he asked mildly.
"They are locked away in my trunk," said I.
"You certainly have taken my advice with a vengeance," said he. "I
suppose I shall have to do something to protect myself."
He leaned over his desk and became absorbed in his everlasting game of
checkers. The smile left my face, for I thought that he had forgotten
my presence, as he had forgotten it so many times before. But after a
moment he slanted his head, focussed one microscope on me, and said:
"Do you think you could cover Abraham Weinberg's funeral this
afternoon?"
So it was that Gladys Todd's crusader at last broke down the gates of
the Holy City. But I fear that it was to become one of the defending
infidels. Doctor Todd, in his letter to whom it might concern,
announced that David Malcolm was about to launch himself into
journalism. And now, after long waiting, David Malcolm was launched.
Just when he was despairing of ever leaving the ways he had shot down
them suddenly into the Temple Emanu-El and the funeral of Abraham
Weinberg.