One of the drawers in my desk is full of letters that people have sent in.
Some of them are knocks or boosts, but most of them are tips. There are
several hundred tips on stories in the drawer.
Today, while looking them over I thought that these tips were a story in
themselves. To begin with, the different kinds of stationery and the
different kinds of handwriting. You would think that stationery and
handwriting so varied would contain varied suggestions and varied points
of view.
But from the top of the pile to the bottom--through 360 letters written on
360 different kinds of paper--there runs only one tip. And in the 360
different kinds of handwriting there runs only one story.
* * * * *
"There is a man I see almost every day on my way home from work," writes
one, "and I think he would make a good story. There is something queer
about him. He keeps mumbling to himself all the time." This tip is on
plain stationery.
"--and I see the old woman frequently," writes another. "Nobody knows who
she is or what she does. She is sure a woman of mystery. You ought to be
able to get a good story out of her." This tip is on pink stationery.
"I think you can find him around midnight walking through the city hall.
He walks through the hall every midnight and whistles queer tunes. Nobody
has ever talked to him and they don't know what he does there. There is
certainly a queer story in that man." This tip is written on a business
letterhead.
"She lives in a back room and so far as anybody knows has no occupation.
There's something awfully queer about her and I've often wondered what the
mystery about her really was. Won't you look her up and write it out? Her
address is--" This tip is on monogrammed paper.
"I've been waiting for you to write about the queer old man who hangs out
on the Dearborn Street bridge. I've passed him frequently and he's always
at the same place. I've wondered time and again what his history was and
why he always stood in the same place." This tip is on a broker's
stationery.
"He sells hot beans in the loop and he's an old-timer. He's always
laughing and whenever I see him I think, 'There's a story in that old man.
There's sure something odd about him.'" This tip is on scratch paper.
"I saw her first several years ago. She was dressed all in black and was
running. As it was past midnight I thought it strange. But I've seen her
since and always late at night and she's always running. She must be about
forty years old and from what I could see of her face a very curious kind
of woman. In fact, we call her the woman of mystery in our neighborhood.
Come out to Oakley Avenue some night and see for yourself. There's a
wonderful story in that running woman, I'm certain." This tip is signed "A
Stenographer."
They continue--tips on strange, weird, curious, odd, old, chuckling,
mysterious men and women. Solitaries. Enigmatic figures moving silently
through the streets. Nameless ones; exiles from the free and easy
conformity of the town.
If you should read these letters all through at one sitting you would get
a very strange impression of the city. You would see a procession of
mysterious figures flitting through the streets, an unending swarm of dim
ones, queer ones. And then as you kept on reading this procession would
gradually focus into a single figure. This is because all the letters are
so nearly alike and because the mysterious ones offered as tips are
described in almost identical terms.
So the dim ones, the queer ones, would become a composite, and you would
have in your thought the image of a single one. A huge, nebulous
caricature--hooded, its head lowered, its eyes peering furtively from
under shaggy brows, its thin fingers fumbling under a great black cloak,
its feet moving in a soundless shuffle over the pavement.
Sometimes I have gone out and found the "woman of mystery" given in a
letter. Usually an embittered creature living in the memory of wrongs that
life has done her. Or a psychopathic case suffering from hallucinations or
at war with its own impulses. And each of them has said, "I hate people. I
don't like this neighborhood. And I keep to myself."