WHETHER due to a naturally weak and incompetent physique or a mind which
unduly tortures itself with the evidences of a none-too-smooth working
of the creative impulse and its machinery, or whether I had merely had
my fill of reportorial work as such and could endure no more, or
whatever else might have been the cause, I finally determined to get out
of the newspaper profession entirely, come what might and cost what it
might, although just what I was to do once I was out I could not guess.
I had no trade or profession other than this, and the thought of editing
or writing for anything save a newspaper was as far from me as
engineering or painting. I did not think I could write anything beyond
newspaper news items, and with this conclusion many will no doubt be
glad to agree with me even unto this day.
Yet out of this messy and heartless world in which I was now working I
did occasionally extract a tale that was printable, only so low was my
credit that I rarely won the privilege of writing it myself. Had I
imagined that I could write I might easily have built up stories out of
what I saw which would have shocked the souls of the magazine editors
and writers, but they would never have been published. They would have
been too low, gruesome, drab, horrible, and so beyond the view of any
current magazine or its clientele.
Life at that time, outside the dark picture of it presented by the daily
papers, must, as I have shown, be all sweetness and gayety and humor. We
must discuss only our better selves, and arrive at a happy ending; or if
perchance this realer world must be referred to it must be indicated in
some cloudy manner which would give it more the charm of shadow than of
fact, something used to enhance the values of the lighter and more
perfect and beautiful things with which our lives must concern
themselves. Marriage, if I read the current magazines correctly, was a
sweet and delicate affair, never marred by the slightest erratic conduct
of any kind. Love was made in heaven and lasted forever. Ministers,
doctors, lawyers and merchants, were all good men, rarely if ever guilty
of the shams and subterfuges and trashy aspects of humanity. If a man
did an evil thing it was due to his lower nature, which really had
nothing to do with his higher—and it was a great concession for the
intelligentsia of that day (maybe of this) to admit that he had two
natures, one of which was not high. Most of us had only the higher one,
our better nature.... When I think of the literary and social snobbery
and bosh of that day, its utter futility and profound faith in its own
goodness, as opposed to facts of its own visible life, I have to smile.
But it never occurred to me that I could write, in the literary sense,
and as for editing, I never even thought of it. And yet that was the
very next thing I did. I wandered about thinking what I was to do,
deciding each day that if I had the courage of a rat I would no longer
endure this time-consuming game of reporting, for the pitiful sum which
I was allowed to draw. What more could it do for me? I asked myself over
and over. Make me more aware of the brutality, subtlety, force, charm,
selfishness of life? It could not if I worked a hundred years.
Essentially, as I even then saw, it was a boy’s game, and I was slowly
but surely passing out of the boy stage. Yet in desperation because I
saw disappearing the amount which I had saved up in Pittsburgh, and I
had not one other thing in sight, I visited other newspaper offices to
see if I could not secure, temporarily at least, a better regular
salary. But no. Whenever I could get in to see a city or managing
editor, which was rare, no one seemed to want me. At the offices of the
_Herald_, _Times_, _Tribune_, _Sun_, and elsewhere the same outer office
system worked to keep me out, and I was by now too indifferent to the
reportorial work and too discouraged really to wish to force myself in
or to continue as a reporter at all. Indeed I went about this matter of
inquiry more or less perfunctorily, not really believing in either
myself or my work. If I had secured a well-paying position I presume
that I should have continued. Fortunately or unfortunately, as one
chooses to look at such things, I did not; but it seemed far from
fortunate then to me.
Finally one Saturday afternoon, having brought in a story which related
to a missing girl whose body was found at the morgue and being told to
“give the facts to —— and let him write it,” I summoned up sufficient
courage to say to the assistant who ordered me to do this:
“I don’t see why I should always have to do this. I’m not a beginner in
this game. I wrote stories, and big ones, before ever I came to this
paper.”
“Maybe you did,” he replied rather sardonically, “but we have the
feeling that you haven’t proved to be of much use to us.”
After this there was nothing to say and but one thing to do. I could not
say that I had had no opportunities; but just the same I was terribly
hurt in my pride. Without knowing what to do or where to go, I there and
then decided that, come what might, this was the end of newspaper
reporting for me. Never again, if I died in the fight, would I
condescend to be a reporter on any paper. I might starve, but if so—I
would starve. Either I was going to get something different, something
more profitable to my mind, or I was going to starve or get out of New
York.
I went to the assistant and turned over my data, then got my hat and
went out. I felt that I should be dismissed eventually anyhow for
incompetence and insubordination, so dark was my mood in regard to all
of it, and so out I went. One thing I did do; I visited the man who had
first ordered the city editor to put me on and submitted to him various
clippings of work done in Pittsburgh with the request that he advise me
as to where I might turn for work.
“Better try the _Sun_,” was his sane advice. “It’s a great school, and
you might do well over there.”
But although I tried I could not get on the _Sun_—not, at least, before
I had managed to do something else.
Thus ended my newspaper experiences, which I never resumed save as a
writer of Sunday specials, and then under entirely different
conditions—but that was ten years later. In the meantime I was now
perforce turning toward a world which had never seemed to contain any
future for me, and I was doing it without really knowing it. But that is
another story. It might be related under some such title as _Literary
Experiences_.
* * * * *
_N.B._ Four years later, having by then established myself sufficiently
to pay the rent of an apartment, secure furniture and convince myself
that I could make a living for two, I undertook that perilous adventure
with the lady of my choice—and that, of course, after the first flare of
love had thinned down to the pale flame of duty. Need anything more be
said? The first law of convention had been obeyed, whereas the governing
forces of temperament had been overridden—and with what results
eventually you may well suspect. So much for romance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s note:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in
the public domain.