bulletins of the gradual disintegration of his biggest "special,"
scheduled for the coming Sunday edition, which was to tell with
sympathetic amplitude of a beautiful French maiden who had drowned
herself because some young man no longer loved her. The active reporter
assigned to the case had telephoned first his discovery that the girl
never had a lover, but cheerily suggested that this explained her
suicide as well as the earlier theory, and wasn't so hackneyed, sagely
adding that he would get the story anyhow. Subsequently he had rung up
the office to report, with no slight disgust, that there was no suicide
to explain, as the girl was not dead. She had merely gone to visit
friends in the country, and the people in the house, missing her, had
decided that the peaceful waters of the Hudson--
Maxwell hung up the receiver with a few crisp remarks addressed to
space, and absorbed in awestruck silence by a young woman at the other
end of the room who eased her type-writing labor by pausing to hear
them fully. It was at this inauspicious moment that the card of Mr.
Bart Harrington was brought in by an office boy. Maxwell surveyed it
with strong disfavor.
"Who is he?" he asked, regarding the office boy severely.
The office boy avowed deprecatingly that he didn't know.
"He 'ain't never been here before," he submitted, in extenuation. "He
says he's got a Sunday story."
Maxwell resigned himself to the waste of five minutes of precious time.
"Show 'm in," he commanded, testily. He sat down at his desk and turned
toward the door an expression that reminded callers of the value of
time and the brevity of life. Mr. Harrington, who had followed the boy
through the door with conviction of these two things, dropped into a
chair beside the editor's desk and surveyed Maxwell with a smile so
young, so trustful, and withal so engaging, that unconsciously the
stern features of that functionary relaxed. Nevertheless, he was not
jarred out of his routine.
"Got your story with you, Mr. Harrington?" he asked, briskly, holding
out his hand for the manuscript. "If you'll leave it, I'll read--"
Harrington interrupted him with an impressive shake of his head. Then
he settled back in his chair, crossed one leg comfortably over the
other, plunged his hands deep in the pockets of his very shabby
overcoat, and continued to regard the editor with his singularly
boyish, dimpling smile. With one swift glance Maxwell took him in, from
the broken boot on the foot he was gently swinging to and fro to the
thick, curly locks on his handsome head. He had a complexion like a
girl's, a dimple in each cheek, and a jaw like a bull-dog's. He was all
of six feet tall, and his badly made clothes could not wholly conceal
the perfect lines of his figure. He was about twenty-two years old,
Maxwell decided, and, notwithstanding his dimples, his complexion, his
youth, and his smile, he conveyed a vivid impression of masculinity and
strength. He was wholly self-possessed, and his manner suggested that
the business which had brought him where he was was of such urgent
value and importance that the busy world itself might well hush its
noisy activities long enough to hear of it. To his own great surprise,
Maxwell waited until his caller was prepared to speak.
Harrington shook his head again slowly. Then he tapped his forehead
with the second finger of his right hand.
"I have it heah," he said, slowly, referring evidently to the brow he
had indicated, and speaking with a slight drawl and the strongly marked
accent of the Southern mountaineer. "I 'lowed I wouldn't write it till
I knew you-all wanted it. I'd like to tell it. Then if--"
Maxwell nodded, and glanced at his watch.
"Fire away," he said, elegantly. "But be as quick as you can, please.
This is closing day and every minute counts."
Harrington smiled his ingenuous smile. It was a wistful smile--not a
happy one--but it seemed, somehow, to illumine the office. Maxwell
reflected irritably that there was something unusually likable about
the fellow, but he wished he'd hurry up and get out. From force of
habit his fingers grasped a blue pencil on his desk, and he began to
fumble nervously among the manuscripts that lay before him. Harrington
settled back more firmly in his chair, and the swinging of his torn
boot was accelerated a trifle, but his voice when he spoke was full of
quiet confidence.
"It's a good thing, suh," he said, "and I can tell you-all about it in
a sentence. I'm goin' to commit suicide to-day, an' I agree to write
the experience foh you, up to the last minute, if you-all will have me
buried decently. I don't cayah to be shovelled into the Pottah's Field."
Maxwell dropped the blue pencil and wheeled to look at him. Then his
face hardened.
"It's a pretty bad joke," he said, "or a bum sort of bid for charity.
In either case you can't waste any more of my--"
But Harrington had sprung to his feet, his blond young face black with
passion.
"Damn you!" he hissed, thrusting his head down close to the other's and
clinching his fists. "How dahe you-all say I lie o' ask charity? I'd
see you-all in hell befoah I'd take a cent of youah damned money.
'Ain't you got brains enough in youah haid to see that I've got to the
end of mah rope?"
Maxwell was a clever man, educated in the world's university. He knew
truth when he met it, and he knew human nature.
"Sit down," he said, quietly, "and tell me about it. I'm sorry I spoke
as I did, but you must admit that your proposition was rather
startling."
Harrington sat down, still breathing hard in his excitement, but
evidently making a resolute effort to control himself.
"That's why I brought it heah," he said, answering the other's last
words, "You-all like stahtlin' things, don't you? That's what you
print. I'm offerin' you a straight bahgain, suh--a business
proposition. If you-all don't want it, say so."
Maxwell smiled in his turn, but there was nothing ironic in the smile,
nor in the look he turned on his fellow-man.
"It's not quite as simple as you seem to think," he explained, gently.
"But tell me more about it. What led to this decision? What makes you
think suicide is the only way out of your troubles? That's a part of
the story, you know. Let me have that first, in a few words.
"It can be told, suh, in three," said the Southerner. His smile had
returned. His voice was the cool voice of one who discussed abstract
things. "I'm a failyuh. This wold 'ain't no use foh failyuhs. I've
given myself all the time and chances I dese'ved, but I cayn't win out,
so I've got to _git_ out. The's no one to ca'e. I've no kin, no ons
dependin' on me in any way. As foh me, I'm ti'ed; life ain't wuth the
effo't."
Maxwell regarded him.
"You don't look like a quitter," he said, thoughtfully.
The boy's face blazed again, but he kept his temper.
"To quit means to give somethin' up," he said, doggedly. "I ain't
givin' anythin' up. I 'ain't got anythin' to give up. Life without
wo'k, o' interest, o' fren's, o' ambition, o' love--that ain't livin'!
If you-all evah tried it, you'd know. I 'ain't been so chee'ful in
yeahs as I've been sence I made up my mind to 'quit,' as you-all call
it."
"You've got health, haven't you?" demanded Maxwell. "Yes."
Maxwell brought his hand down on the desk with an air of finality.
"Then you've got everything. Do you mean to tell me that a fellow like
you can't earn enough to support himself? If you do, you're talking
rot."
Harrington took this with his wide, guileless grin. He was not offended
now, for he felt the friendly interest and sympathy under the other's
words. His voice when he replied was gentler.
"I ain't sayin' I can't keep body an' soul together, foh maybe I can,"
he conceded. "But I'm sayin' _that_ ain't _life_. I'm sayin' I ain't
been fitted fo' wo'k. I 'ain't been educated. I've lived in a log-cabin
down in the Virginia mountains all man life. I left thah six weeks ago,
after mah mother died. She was the last of ouah family but me. I 'ain't
never been to school. She taught me to read in the Bible, an' to write.
I 'ain't nevah read anotheh book except the Bible and Mistah
Shakespeah's poems, an' Mistah Pluta'ch's _Lives of Great Men_. I know
them by hea't. I don't know whe' she got them o' whe' she came from.
She was different from othah mountain women. I've been No'th six weeks,
and I've tried ha'd to find a place whah I could fit in, but th' ain't
none. Men must be trained fuh wo'k; I ain't trained. I cayn't go back,
foh the's no one thah, an' I hate the mountains."
Maxwell's reply was brief and to the point.
"Think you could learn to run our elevator without killing us all?" he
inquired. "Well, you've got to. You've been talking awful guff, you
know. Now you're going to work, right here. We need a new man. The one
we have has been drunk three days. You're going to run the elevator and
get fifteen dollars a week to begin with. Here's your first week's
salary in advance. I'll arrange about the job with the superintendent.
I'll give you some books, and you can educate yourself. When you're
above elevator work we'll give you something better. You'll probably
have my job inside of a year," he ended, jocosely.
The hand of the mountaineer stretched out to him trembled as Maxwell
grasped it.
"You ah the only white man I've found in the No'th," said the
Southerner, breathlessly. "I'll make good, as they say up heah. But I
don't know how I can thank you."
"Don't try," said Maxwell, brusquely. "Be here at eight in the morning.
By nine there will be a few callers I may want you to throw down the
shaft."
Thus began the connection between the _Searchlight_ and Bart
Harrington, subsequently its most popular employe. Before the week was
over all the reporters and most of the editors had casually sought from
Maxwell some details concerning his protege, but had received few.
Harrington was a new man, and he came from the Virginia mountains, and
was most obliging and altogether engaging. This was all the information
acquired even by the indefatigable Miss Mollie Merk, whose success in
extracting from individuals information it was their dearest desire to
conceal had made her a star member of the _Searchlight's_ staff. It was
to Miss Merk, however, that Harrington announced his first important
discovery. Leaning across her desk one evening after his successor had
taken the "car," the new elevator man touched a subject much upon his
mind.
"I got wet the othah day," he began, conversationally, "an' mah
landlady let me go to the kitchen to dry mah clothes. I obse'ved as I
sat by huh stove that the lid of the wash boilah kept liftin' up, all
by itself, an' then I saw 'twas raised by the steam of the hot watah
inside. I kep' thinkin' 'bout it, an' it seems to me thah's an idea
thah, a soht of ene'gy, you know, that might be used in big ways. I
mus' think it out."
Mollie Merk looked at him, vague memories of one James Watts stirring
uneasily in her brain.
"There's a good deal written about steam," she said, sympathetically.
"I'll bring you a book on it."
She did, for Harrington was already high in her regard; and quite
possibly the volume killed in that youth's aspiring soul the germ of a
beautiful hope. But he was to the fore very soon with a discovery of
equal weight. This time his confidant was Maxwell.
"Why is it," he asked that busy citizen one evening, "that when I get
in the bathtub the water rises highah? Ain't the' some principle the'
that is impo'tant? As I think it ovah--"
Maxwell hurriedly assured him that there was, and the volume on steam
was followed by a treatise on specific gravity, which gave Mr.
Harrington food for reflection for several days. Nevertheless, the
discovery that others had been before him did not depress him in the
least. He gave the Sunday editor an insight into his views on one
occasion when that gentleman was able to convince him that Isaac Newton
and not Bart Harrington had discovered the law of gravitation while
watching an apple fall from a tree.
"I obse'ved it, too, suh," argued Harrington, sturdily, defending his
position as a scientific discoverer. "Of co'se I see the fo'ce of you'h
rema'k that the othah man was _first_. That is unfo'tunate foh me. But
does it affect the value of _my_ discovery? It does not, suh."
"There's a good deal in it," Wilson conceded to Maxwell, after he had
delightedly repeated this conversation. "Of course, the fellow has an
unusual mind. It's a pity he's always a few hundred years behind the
time, but, as he hints, that needn't dim our admiration for the quality
of his brain fibre."
Maxwell laughed uneasily.
"I can't make up my mind," he admitted, in his turn, "whether he's a
genius or a plain fool. He lost his dinner last night explaining to me
how the power of Niagara could be applied to practical uses. He was
horribly depressed when I told him it not only could be, but was. I let
him talk, though, to see what his ideas were, and they were very
practical."
"I call that mighty encouraging," said the chief, optimistically. "He's
getting down to modern times. After he has discovered the telephone and
telegraph and cable and wireless telegraphy he may tackle telepathy and
give us something new."
But Harrington indulged in an unexplained digression at this point. He
discovered literature and became acquainted with the works of one
Charles Dickens, of whose genius he made himself the sounding
trumpet-call for the ears of an indifferent world.
"The's a book called _David Coppe'field_," he confided to Maxwell one
night when he had lingered for a chat with his benefactor. "It's great,
suh. You should read it sometime, Mistah Maxwell; you would appreciate
its wo'th." He outlined the plot then and there, and Maxwell
good-naturedly listened, finding his compensation in the enthusiast's
original comments on character and situation. This, however,
established a bad precedent, and Maxwell was subsequently obliged to
hear a careful synopsis of _Little Dorrit, Old Curiosity Shop,_ and
_Oliver Twist_, in quick succession, followed by the somewhat painful
recitation of most of Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_--for
Harrington was now entering the daisied field of poetry.
It was at this point that Maxwell felt himself constrained to give his
protege a few words of advice, the city editor having objected to an
enforced hearing of the plot of _Ivanhoe_, and Mollie Merk having
admitted that she had climbed six flights of stairs twice a day for a
week in preference to hearing the final eighteen stanzas of _Paradise
Lost_.
Maxwell explained the situation to his friend as gently as he could one
morning when Harrington had interrupted a talk between himself and a
distinguished Western editor who was spending a few days in New York.
"You see, old man," he ended, kindly, "this is a big, new world to you,
but the rest of us have been living in it all our lives. We've taken in
these things you're discovering--or we've had them driven into us at
school. So--er--they're not new, and while we appreciate them we
haven't got time to go over them all again. When you get up to modern
fiction--the things people are reading to-day--"
With one expressive gesture of the hand Mr. Harrington demolished
modern fiction.
"_I_ 'ain't got time foh that, Mistah Maxwell," he said, respectfully.
"I read one, and I regret to say, suh, that it was too much. I have
looked into othe's, but I go no fu'thah. I have tried to open to you
gentlemen the great wo'ks I have discove'ed, an' youah reply is that
you-all have read them, suh. I am surprised. Do you give one glance at
a picture an' nevah look again? Do you listen once to music, o' must it
be something new and mode'n ev'ry time? Last night I heard the
composition of a musician named Beethoven, who, I have learned, has
been dead foh yeahs. Yet people still listen to his notes. Why don't
they read these books of Mistah Dickens and Mistah Scott and Mistah
Shakespeah?"
Maxwell murmured feebly that a few did. A fitting response to
Harrington's arraignment somehow eluded him, and before he had found
the words he wanted an unexpected interruption came from the Western
editor, who had been listening to the conversation with almost painful
interest.
"Mr. Harrington," he asked, abruptly, "can you write?"
Harrington looked surprised and boyishly injured.
"Yes, suh," he replied, stiffly. "I can read and write."
"Oh, of course, of course," explained the other, hastily. "I don't mean
that. Can you write for the press? Have you tried to write anything for
other people to read?"
Harrington's characteristic smile flashed forth.
"I have submitted sev'al ahticles to Mistah Maxwell," he said, with
some dignity, "but thus far I have not been fo'tunate enough---"
Maxwell drew a little package of manuscripts from a pigeon-hole in his
desk and handed them to the visitor without a word. They spoke for
themselves. The latter glanced through them, frowning. Maxwell returned
to his work. Harrington waited. At last the Westerner handed the papers
back to his Eastern colleague, shaking his head as he did so.
"These won't do at all," he said, decidedly, "but they confirm my
impression that this man can write something worth while." He addressed
himself to Maxwell now, discussing Harrington as impersonally as if he
were absent, but from time to time his keen eyes returned to the
Southerner's face.
"Here's a man," he began, didactically, "who is hundreds of years
behind the times. But please remember that he would have been Watts,
Newton, and several other discoverers if he had existed before them.
He's as much of a pilgrim on this earth to-day as if he were a visitor
from another planet. But he has an extraordinary type of mind and very
good taste--a strong, ignorant, instinctive feeling for the best. If he
would write a series of short articles giving his point of view to the
busy men and women of to-day, they should be 'good stuff'--a sort of
artistic voice crying in the commercial wilderness, don't you see. You
or some one else may have to put them into shape, until he catches the
idea, but he will catch it all right. He's clever enough. If you want
to try him, and it turns out as I think it will, I'll buy the material
for simultaneous publication in Chicago. What do you say?"
"Agreed," said Maxwell, briefly. "I think you're right. We'll try it,
anyhow. I guess we won't have much trouble persuading Harrington to
favor us with the opportunity of examining his manuscript." He smiled
as he glanced at the other. Harrington's eyes were shining. His words,
when he spoke, came breathlessly.
"I'll have the first copy ready in the mo'ning, Mistah Maxwell," he
promised. "And I reckon," he added, straightening his splendid
shoulders--"I reckon I'll give up the elevatah, suh."
Maxwell laughed in high good-humor.
"Oh yes," he agreed, "I guess we'll have to give you a successor there,
in any event. However this experiment turns out, it's time you had
something better than that."
Harrington's first paper was signed "A Visitor from Mars," and Maxwell
marvelled as he read it. It was not a great production, and it was full
of small faults; but there was an indescribable naivete and charm about
it to which its quaint, old-time style added the final touch.
Harrington's studies of what he called "the olden masters" had not been
in vain. Late the next evening, in the peace of his small Harlem flat,
Maxwell submitted the manuscript to his wife for criticism. He passed
it over without comment, desiring the unprejudiced opinion of the
intelligent general reader, and Mrs. Maxwell read it twice, very
carefully, before she handed it back. When she did there was a mist
over her bright brown eyes.
"The darling thing!" she cried. "Who wrote it, Bob? It's as clever as
it can be, and yet there's something about it that makes me feel queer
and choky. It's--it's"--her face brightened--"it's something like the
feeling I had when little Bobbie wrote me his first letter, that time I
went home to take care of mother. One almost expects to see the words
staggering down one side of the page in dear little, crooked, printed
letters. It's the manuscript of a grown-up, sophisticated baby."
Maxwell took the copy from her, well pleased at this conjugal
confirmation of his own impression.
"It's Harrington's," he explained, "and he's not sophisticated enough
to hurt anybody yet. But he's going to make a success of this
job--there's no doubt of that. I'll ask him to come up to dinner
to-morrow night and go over the stuff with me a bit. I don't want to do
it in the office."
The Western editor was equally enthusiastic the following day. He was
also glowing pleasantly in the confirmation of his own keenness of
intuition.
"You wouldn't have seen what you had here," he explained to Maxwell,
unnecessarily. "This is pretty much like genius. This fellow will be
writing his autobiography some day, and perhaps he'll remember his
humble discoverers. Meantime, don't you spoil his work by trying to
edit it. Let it alone. It's all right."
The column of "The Visitor from Mars" grew to two columns, and became a
strong feature of the Sunday _Searchlight_. Harrington, now in
possession of a fair weekly income and unlimited leisure, bought new
clothes, rented a sitting-room, bedroom, and bath in a comfortable
bachelor apartment-house, and spent his days browsing in libraries,
where he read omnivorously. Incidentally, he discovered not only the
telephone, telegraph, and other inventions predicted by the Sunday
editor, but a locomotive fire-box which had received some favor among
railroad officials for ten years, and a superb weapon of destruction
which had been used in the Japanese army for six.
"He's getting on!" cried Wilson, delightedly, when Maxwell recounted
these small disappointments in an otherwise inspiring onward career.
"He's learned to dress like a gentleman, speak like a gentleman, and
look like a gentleman, and he has also learned that there have been a
few active minds in the world before his came. Give him time. He'll do
something big yet."
Harrington promptly verified this prediction by falling in love, which
he did on a scale and with an abandon unprecedented in the history of
Park Row. It was a tempestuous upheaval for the emotional Southerner,
and every other interest in his life retired to the remotest background
and remained there, unseen and unsuspected. His choice fell on a woman
reporter of the _Searchlight_, a quiet, refined young girl, whose
journalistic activities were confined to reports of meetings of women's
clubs and the descriptions of other social events. For her Bart
Harrington commanded the morning stars to sing together, and dared the
dazzled sun to look upon her like. To him she was Laura, Beatrice,
Juliet, Francesca--the essence of all the loves of all the ages in one
perfect form. During their brief engagement he called for her in a cab
each morning, and drove her to her home each night. He would have laid
a carpet of flowers for her from the office to the curb had it been
practicable. Also, he discovered Keats and Shelley and Byron and
Swinburne, and quoted them until the office boys, who alone remained to
listen to him, demanded that increase of salary justly attached to
increased nervous strain. Swinburne, Harrington promptly decided, he
did not like. There was an earthiness in his verse, he explained to
Maxwell, a material side, wholly lacking in the love of the right man
for the right woman--in other words, in his own love for Miss Evans. He
wrote a column about this kind of love in his Mars department, and a
hundred thousand men read it with gurgles of warm appreciation and
quoted it at dinner the next night. Then he married Miss Evans and
became interested in the price of coal and other household supplies.
His absorption in these topics was almost feverish. He talked about
them morning, noon, and night. His interest in literature flickered and
died out. To Maxwell, his first and still his best friend, he finally
confided his dilemma.
"You see, old man," he began, one morning about six months after the
wedding, "we've discovered, Clara and I, that the least we can live on
in New York is fifty dollahs a week. And you see I'm only getting
forty. It's serious, isn't it? But Clara says that if we buy all ouah
canned goods at Lacy's---"
Maxwell stopped him with a gesture of desperation.
"Harrington, if you say another word I shall go crazy," he announced,
with the calmness of despair. "We'll give you fifty dollars a week. Now
consider that settled, and for God's sake get your mind off it. If you
don't look out you'll be writing about coal and canned goods in your
Mars column. What are you going to write this week, anyhow?" he
demanded, with sudden suspicion.
Harrington looked guilty.
"I thought I'd say something about how prices have advanced," he
faltered. "Clara says that two yeahs ago--" But Maxwell had taken him
by the shoulders.