(IN WHICH OUR HERO DARTS OFF AT A TANGENT)
It is not said why our hero abandoned bristol board and india ink, and
it is no duty of this inquirendo to offer surmise. The fact is that he
disappeared from Broome street, and after the appropriate interval might
have been observed (odd as it seems) on the campus of the University of
Kansas. This vault into the petals of the sunflower seems so quaint that
I once attempted to find out from Mr. Holliday just when it was that he
attended courses at that institution. He frankly said that he could not
remember. Now he has no memory at all for dates, I will vouch; yet it
seems odd (I say) that he did not even remember the numerals of the
class in which he was enrolled. A "queer feller," indeed, as Mr.
Tarkington has called him. So I cannot attest, with hand on Book, that
he really was at Kansas University. He may have been a footpad during
that period. I have often thought to write to the dean of the university
and check the matter up. It may be that entertaining anecdotes of our
hero's college career could be spaded up.
Just why this remote atheneum was sconce for Mr. Holliday's candle I do
not hazard. It seems I have heard him say that his cousin, Professor
Wilbur Cortez Abbott (of Yale) was then teaching at the Kansas college,
and this was the reason. It doesn't matter now; fifty years hence it may
be of considerable importance.
However, we must press on a little faster. From Kansas he returned to
New York and became a salesman in the book store of Charles Scribner's
Sons, then on Fifth avenue below Twenty-third street. Here he was
employed for about five years. From this experience may he traced three
of the most delightful of the "Walking-Stick Papers." It was while at
Scribner's that he met Joyce Kilmer, who also served as a Scribner
book-clerk for two weeks in 1909. This friendship meant more to Bob
Holliday than any other. The two men were united by intimate adhesions
of temperament and worldly situation. Those who know what friendship
means among men who have stood on the bottom rung together will ask no
further comment. Kilmer was Holliday's best man in 1913; Holliday stood
godfather to Kilmer's daughter Rose. On Aug. 22, 1918, Mrs. Kilmer
appointed Mr. Holliday her husband's literary executor. His memoir of
Joyce Kilmer is a fitting token of the manly affection that sweetens
life and enriches him who even sees it from a distance.
Just when Holliday's connection with the Scribner store ceased I do not
know. My guess is, about 1911. He did some work for the New York Public
Library (tucking away in his files the material for the essay "Human
Municipal Documents") and also dabbled in eleemosynary science for the
Russell Sage Foundation; though the details of the latter enterprise I
cannot even conjecture. Somehow or other he fell into the most richly
amusing post that a belletristic journalist ever adorned, as general
factotum of _The Fishing Gazette_, a trade journal. This is laid bare
for the world in "The Fish Reporter."
About 1911 he began to contribute humorous sketches to the Saturday
Magazine of the New York _Evening Post_. In 1912-13 he was writing
signed reviews for the New York _Times_ Review of Books. 1913-14 he was
assistant literary editor of the New York _Tribune_. His meditations on
the reviewing job are embalmed in "That Reviewer Cuss." In 1914 the wear
and tear of continual hard work on Grub Street rather got the better of
him: he packed a bag and spent the summer in England. Four charming
essays record his adventures there, where we may leave him for the
moment while we warm up to another aspect of the problem. Let us just
set down our second memorandum:
[Illustration]
Second Memo--Mr. Holliday knows the Literary Game from All Angles!