_March 6._ You once said to me that you could conceive of no
circumstances that would justify dishonesty; for, no matter what the
seeming benefits might be, the indirect consequences and the effect on
the misdoer’s character more than neutralized them. The wrong I have
done has only proved your view, and I have come to scorn myself for the
dishonorable part I have played. Yet I think that you would pity more
than blame me, if you could but know my sacrifices. I drifted into the
fraud unconsciously, and cannot now decide at what point the actual
stifling of my conscience began. I suppose the first misstep was when I
entered Mr. Whitely’s employment; yet though I knew it to be
unscrupulous in him to impose my editorials as his own, it still seemed
to me no distinct transgression in me to write them for him. With that
first act those that followed became possible, and each involved so
slight an increase in the moral lapse, and my debt to you was so potent
an excuse to blind me, that at the time I truly thought I was doing
right. I wonder what you would have done had you been in my position?
Mr. Blodgett’s shrewdness in stipulating what work I was to do for Mr.
Whitely quickly proved itself. One of the magazines asked my employer
to contribute an article on The Future of Journalism. Handing me the
letter, he said, “Dr. Hartzmann, kindly write a couple of thousand
words on that subject.”
“That surely is not part of my duty, Mr. Whitely,” I had the courage to
respond.
He looked at me quickly, and his mouth stiffened into a straight line.
“Does that mean that you do not choose to do it?” he asked suavely.
My heart failed me at the thought that if I lost my position I might
never get so good a one, and should drag my debt through life. For once
thought of you made me cowardly. I answered, “I will write it, Mr.
Whitely;” and he said, “I thank you,” as if I had done him a favor.
I told Mr. Blodgett of the incident, that evening, with a wry face and
a laugh over my bravery, and he was furious at me.
“Why, you—you”—he stuttered. “Haven’t you learned yet that the man
wouldn’t part with you for anything? He’s so stuck up over his
editorials and what people say of them that he’d as soon think of
discharging his own mother before she weaned him.”
Not content with venting his anger on me, he came into the office the
next day and told Mr. Whitely I should not be imposed on, and finally
forced him to agree that I should receive whatever the review paid for
the article.
After this I wrote several magazine articles for Mr. Whitely, and soon
another development of our curious relations occurred. One afternoon he
informed me, “The Library trustees request me to deliver an address at
the dedication of the building. I shall be grateful for any suggestions
you can make of a proper subject.”
“Books?” I replied, with an absolutely grave face.
“That is eminently suitable,” he responded. “Possibly you can spare the
time to compose such a paper; and as it should be of a scholarly
character some Greek and Latin seem to me advisable.”
“How much?” I asked, inwardly amused to note if he would understand my
question, or would suppose it referred to the quantity of dead
languages I was to inject.
“What is the labor worth?” he inquired, setting my doubt at rest, and
proving his business ability to recognize the most distant allusion to
a dollar. When I named a price, he continued: “That is excessive. The
profession of authorship is so little recompensed that there are many
good writers in New York who would gladly do it for less.”
“I can do it cheaper, if, like them, I crib it from books at the
Astor,” I asserted.
“I do not see why an address composed in the Astor Library should not
be entirely satisfactory?” he questioned, in his smooth,
self-controlled manner.
“Did you never hear of the man who left the theatre in the middle of
Hamlet because, he said, he didn’t care to hear a play that was all
quotations?” I asked, with a touch of irony.
“I presume the story has some connection in your mind with the subject
in hand, but I am unable to see the appositeness?” he said
interrogatively and evidently puzzled.
“I merely mentioned it lest you might not know that Pope never lived in
Grub Street.”
He looked at me, still ignorant that I was laughing at him. “You think
it injudicious to have it done by Mather?” he questioned, naming a
fellow who did special work for the paper at times.
“Not at all,” I replied, “provided you label the address ‘hash,’ so
that people who have some discrimination won’t suppose you ignorant
that it is twice-cooked meat you are giving them,” and, turning, I went
on with my work as if the matter were ended.
But the next day he told me, “I have concluded to have you compose that
oration, Dr. Hartzmann;” and from that moment of petty victory I have
not feared my employer.
I wrote the address, and it so pleased Mr. Whitely that, not content
with delivering it, he had it handsomely printed, and sent copies to
all his friends.
The resulting praise he received clearly whetted his appetite for
authorship, for not long after he said to me, “Dr. Hartzmann, you told
me, when you sold me this library, that you were writing a history of
the Turks. How nearly completed is it?”
“I hope to have it ready for press within three months.”
“For some time,” he remarked, “I have meditated the writing of a book,
and possibly yours will serve my purpose.”
I was so taken by surprise that for a moment I merely gazed at him,
since it seemed impossible that even egotism so overwhelming as his
could be capable of such blindness; but he was in earnest, and I could
only revert to Mr. Blodgett’s idea that a business man comes to think
in time that anything he can buy is his. I smiled, and answered, “My
book is not petroleum, Mr. Whitely.”
“If it is what I desire, I will amply remunerate you,” he offered.
“It is not for sale.”
“I presume,” he replied, “that you know what disposition of your book
suits you best. I have, however, noticed in you a strong desire to
obtain money, and I feel sure that we could arrange terms that will
bring you more than you would otherwise receive.”
Even before Mr. Whitely finished speaking, I realized that I was not a
free agent. I owed a debt, and till it was paid I had no right to think
of my own ambition or feelings. I caught my breath in anguish at the
thought, and then, fearing that my courage would fail me, I spoke
hastily: “What do you offer me?”
He smiled blandly as he predicted: “It is hardly a work that will have
a large sale. The Turkish nation has not played an important part in
history.”
“Only conquered the key of the Old World, caused the Crusades, forced
the discovery of America and of the Cape passage, compelled Europe to
develop its own civilization instead of adopting that of the East, and
furnished a question to modern statesmen that they have yet found no
Œdipus to answer,” I retorted.
“Your special pleading does tend to magnify their position,” he
assented. “I shall be happy to look the work over, leaving the terms to
be decided later.”
I am ashamed to confess what a night of suffering I went through,
battling with the love and pride that had grown into my heart for my
book. I knew from the first moment his proposition had been suggested
that he would give me more than I could ever hope to make from the
work, and therefore my course was only too plain; but I had a terrible
struggle to force myself to carry my manuscript to him the following
afternoon.
For the next week he was full of what he was reading; and had the
circumstances been different, I could have asked no higher compliment
as regards its popular interest than the enthusiasm of this unlettered
business man for my book.
“It is quite as diverting as a romance!” he exclaimed. “I can already
see how astonished people will be when they read of the far-reaching
influence of that nation.”
Since the pound of flesh was to be sold, I took advantage of this mood.
After much haggling, which irritated and pained me more than it should,
Mr. Whitely agreed to give me six thousand dollars and the royalties.
Good as the terms were, my heart nearly broke, the day the manuscript
left my hands, for I had put so much thought into the book that it had
almost become part of myself. My father, too, had toiled over it, with
fondest predictions of the fame it would bring me; spending, as it
proved, his very life in the endeavor to make it a great work. That his
love, that the love of my dear professors, and that my own hopes should
all be brought to market and sold as if they were mere merchandise was
so mercenary and cruel that at the last moment it was all I could do to
bring myself to fulfill the bargain. Nothing but my small progress in
paying my debt would have forced me to sell, and I hope nothing but
that would have led me to join in such dishonesty. It was, after all,
part of the price I was paying for the original wrong, and but just
retribution against which I had no right to cry out. Yet for a month I
was so sad that I could scarcely go through my day’s toil; and though
that was a year ago, I have never been able to work with the same vim,
life seems to have so little left in it for me. And idle as the thought
is, when I think of your praise of the book I cannot help dreaming of
what might have been if it had been published in my name; if—Ah, well,
to talk of “ifs” is only to confess that I am beaten, and that I will
not do. Nor is the fight over. I never hoped nor attempted to gain your
love, and that he has won you does not mean failure. To pay my debt is
all I have to do, and though I may feel more ill and disheartened than
I do to-night, I will pay it, come what may.
Good-night, my darling.