THE OLD TEACHER
"Chicago, Illinois.
"Dear Carol and David--
"It is most remarkable that you two can keep on laughing away out there
by yourselves. It makes me think perhaps there is something fine in
this being married business that sort of makes up for the rest of it.
I think it must take an exceptionally good eyesight to discern sunshine
on the slopes of sickness. If I were traveling that route, I am
convinced I should find it led me through dark valleys and over stony
pathways with storm clouds and thunders and lightnings smashing all
around my head.
"You admonished me to talk about myself and leave you alone. Well, I
suppose you know more about yourselves than I could possibly tell you,
and since it is your own little baby sister, I am sure you are more
than willing to turn your telescope away from the sunny slopes a while
for a glimpse of my business dabbles.
"This is Chicago.
"Aunt Grace was rendered more speechless than ever when I announced my
intention of coming, and Prudence was shocked. But father and I talked
it over, and he looked at me in that funny searching way he has and
then said:
"'Good for you, Connie, you have the right idea. Chicago isn't big
enough to swallow you, but it won't take you long to eat Chicago
bodily. Of course you ought to go.'
"I know it is not safe to praise men too highly, they are so easily
convinced of their astounding virtues, but that time I couldn't resist
shaking hands with father and I said, and meant it:
"'Father, you are the only one in the world. I don't believe even the
Lord could make your duplicate.'
"'Mr. Nesbitt was very angry because I left them'. He said that after
he took me, a stupid little country ignoramus, and made something out
of me, my desertion was nothing short of rank ingratitude and religious
hypocrisy and treason to the land of my birth. One might have inferred
that he picked me out of the gutter, brushed the dirt off, smoothed my
ragged looks, and seated me royally in his stenographic chair, and made
a business lady out of me. But it didn't work.
"I came.
"Mr. Baker, the minister there, is back of it. He met me on the street
one day.
"'I hear you are literary,' he said.
"'Well, I think I can write,' I answered modestly.
"Then he said he had a third-half-nephew by marriage, to whom, ground
under the heel of financial incompetency, he had once loaned the
startling sum of fifty dollars,--I say startling, because it startled
me to know a preacher ever had that much ready cash ahead of his
grocery bill. Anyhow, the third-half-nephew, with the fifty dollars as
a nucleus,--I think Providence must have multiplied it a little, for
our fifty dollars never accomplished miracles like that,--but with that
fifty dollars as a starter he did a little plunging for himself, and is
now owner and editor of a great publishing house in Chicago.
"And Mr. Baker, the old minister, kept him going and coming, you might
say, by sending him at frequent intervals, bright and budding lights
with which to illuminate his publications. It seems the
third-half-nephew by marriage, in gratitude for the fifty dollars,
never refused a position to any satellite his uncle chose to recommend.
And Mr. Baker glowed with delight that he had been able, from the
unliterary center of Centerville to send so many candles to shine in
the chandelier of Chicago.
"All I had to do was to come.
"As I said before, I came.
"I went out to Mrs. Holly's on Prairie Avenue and the next morning set
out for the Carver Publishing Company, and found it, with the
assistance of most of the policemen and street-car conductors as well
as a large number of ordinary pedestrians encountered between Prairie
on the South Side, and Wilson Avenue on the North. I asked for Mr.
Carver, and handed him Mr. Baker's letter. He shook hands with me in a
melancholy way and said:
"'When do you want to begin? Where do you live?'
"'To-morrow. I have a room out on the south side, but I will move over
here to be nearer the office.'
"'Hum,--you'd better wait a while.'
"'Isn't it a permanent position?' I asked suspiciously.
"'Oh, yes, the position is permanent, but you may not be.'
"'Mr. Baker assured me--'
"'Oh, sure, he's right. You've got the job. But so far, he has only
sent me nineteen, and the best of them lasted just fourteen days.'
"'Then you are already counting on firing me before the end of two
weeks,' I said indignantly.
"'No. I am not counting on it, but I am prepared for the worst.'
"'What is the job? What am I supposed to do?'
"'You must study our publications and do a little stenographic work,
and read manuscripts and reject the bum ones,--which is an endless
task,--and accept the fairly decent ones,--which takes about five
minutes a week,--and read exchanges and clip shorts for filling, and
write squibs of a spicy nature, and do various and sundry other things
and you haven't the slightest idea how to start.'
"'No, I haven't, but you get me started, and I'll keep going all right.'
"The next morning he asked how long it took me to get to the office
from Prairie, and I said:
"'I moved last night, I have a room down on Diversey Boulevard now.'
"He looked me over thoughtfully. Then he said: 'You ought to be a
poet.'
"'Why? I haven't any poetic ability that I know of.'
"'Probably not, but you can get along without that. What a poet needs
first of all is nerve.'
"I didn't think of anything apt to say in return so I got to work. Day
after day he tried me out on something new and watched me when he
thought I didn't notice, and went over my work very carefully. One
morning he asked me to write five hundred words on 'The First Job in a
Big City,' bringing out a country aspirant's sensations on the occasion
of his first interview with a prospective employer.
"I still felt so strongly about his insolent assurance that I couldn't
hold down his little old job, that I had no trouble at all with the
assignment. He read it slowly and made no comment, but he gave it a
place in the current issue. And then came a blessed day when he said,
'Well, you are on for good, Miss Starr. I now believe in the
scriptural injunction about seventy times seven, and a kind Providence
cut the margin down for me. I forgive Uncle Baker for the nineteen
atrocities at last.'
"I was very happy about it, for I do love the work and the others in
the office are splendid, so keen and clever, and Mr. Carver is really
wonderful. We are not a large concern, and we have to lend a hand
wherever hands are needed. So I am getting five times my fifteen
dollars a week in experience, and I am singing inside every minute I
feel so good about everything. The workers are all efficient and
enthusiastic, and we are great friends. We gossip affectionately about
whoever is absent, and hold a jubilee at the restaurant down-stairs
when any one gets ahead with an extra story. No other publishers have
come rapping at my door in a mad attempt to steal me away from Mr.
Carver. I have no bulky mail soliciting stories from my facile pen.
But I am making good with Mr. Carver, and that's the thing right now.
"Have I fallen in love yet? Carol, dear, I always understood that when
folks get married they lose their sentimentality. Are you the proving
exception? My acquaintance with Chicago masculinity is confined to the
office, the Methodist Church, and the boarding-house. The office force
is all married but the office boy. The Methodist congregation is
composed of women, callow youths and bald heads of families. Women are
counted out, of necessity. I am beyond callow youths, and not advanced
to heads of families. Why, I haven't a chance to fall in love,--worse
luck, too, for I need the experience in my business.
"At the boarding-house I do have a little excitement now and then. The
second night after my installation a man walked into my room without
knocking,--that is, he opened the door.
"'Gee, the old lady wasn't bluffing,' he said, in a tone of surprise.
"It was early in the evening and he was properly dressed and looked
harmless, so I wasn't frightened.
"'Good evening,' I said in my reserved way.
"'Gave you my room, did she?' he asked.
"'She gave me this one,--for a consideration.'
"'Yes, it is mine,' he said sadly. 'She has threatened to do it, lo,
these many years, but I never believed she would. Faith in fickle
human nature,--ah, how futile.'
"'Yes?'
"'Yes. You see now and then I go off with the boys, and spend my money
instead of paying my board, and when I come back I expect my room to be
awaiting me. It always has been. The old lady said she would rent it
the next time, but she had said it so many times! Well, well, well.
Broke, too. It is a sad world, isn't it? Did you ever pray for death?'
"'No, I did not. And if you will excuse me, I think perhaps you had
better fight it out with the landlady. I have paid a month's rent in
advance.'
"'A month's rent!' He advanced and shook hands with me warmly before I
knew what he was doing. 'A month in advance. It is an honor to touch
your hand. Alas, how many moons have waned since I came in personal
contact with one who could pay a month in advance.'
"'The landlady--'
"'Oh, I am going. No room is big enough for two. Lots of fellows room
together to save money, but it is too multum in too parvum; I think I
prefer to spend the money. I have never resorted to it, even in my
brokest days. I didn't leave my pipe here, did I?'
"'I haven't seen it,' I said very coldly.
"'Well, all right. Don't get cross about it. Out into the dark and
cold, out into the wintry night, without a cent to have and hold, but
landladies are always right.'
"He smiled appealingly but I frowned at him with my most ministerial
air.
"'I am a poet,' he said apologetically. 'I can't help going off like
that. It isn't a mental aberration. I do it for a living.'
"I had nothing to say.
"'My card.' He handed it to me with a flourish, a neatly engraved one,
with the word 'advertisement' in the corner. I should have haughtily
spurned it, but I was too curious to know his name. It was William
Canfield Brewer.
"'Well, good night. May your sleep be undisturbed by my ghost stalking
solitary through your slumbers. May no fumes from my pipe interfere
with the violet de parme you represent. If you want any advertising
done, just call on me, William Canfield Brewer. I write poetry, draw
pictures, make up stories, and prove to the absolute satisfaction of
the most skeptical public that any article is even better than you say
it is. I command a princely salary,--but I can't command it long
enough. Adieu, I go, my lady, fare thee well.'
"'Good night.'
"I could hardly wait for breakfast, I was so anxious to ask about him.
I gleaned the following facts. The landlady had packed his belongings
in an old closet and rented me the room in his absence, as he surmised.
He is a darling old idiot who would rather buy the chauffeur a cigar
than pay for his board. He says it is less grubby. He is too good a
fellow to make both ends meet. He is too devoted to his friends to
neglect them for business. He can write the best ads in Chicago and
get the most money for it, but he can't afford the time. Mrs. Gaylord
is a stingy old cat, she always gets her money if she waits long
enough, and he pays three times as much as anything is worth when he
does pay. Mrs. Gaylord's niece is infatuated with him, without
reciprocation, and Mrs. Gaylord wanted her, the niece, to stick to the
grocer's son; she says there is more money in being advertised than
advertising others. Wouldn't Prudence faint if she could hear this
gossip? Don't tell her,--and I wouldn't repeat it for the world.
"I hoped he would come back for another room,--there is lots of
experience in him, I am sure, but he sent for his things. So that is
over. I found his pipe. And I am keeping it so if he gets smokey and
comes back he may have it.
"Oh, I tell you, Carol, Experience may teach in a very expensive
school, but she makes the lessons so interesting, it is really worth
the price.
"Lots of love to you both,
"From
"CONNIE."