It was rather an anomalous position for a knight of Dannebrog, a
familiar friend of princes and nobles, and an _ex-habitue_ of the Cafe
Anglais, to be a common reporter on a Chicago republican journal. Yet
this was the position to which (after some daring exploits in
book-reviewing and art criticism) my friend was finally reduced. As an
art-critic, he might have been a success, if western art had been more
nearly in accord with his own fastidious and exquisitely developed
taste. As it was, he managed in less than a fortnight to bring down
the wrath of the whole artistic brotherhood upon our journal, and as
some of these men were personal friends of the principal stockholders
in the paper, his destructive ardor was checked by an imperative order
from the authorities, from whose will there is no appeal. As a
book-reviewer he labored under similar disadvantages; he stoutly
maintained that the reading of a volume would necessarily and unduly
bias the critic's judgment, and that a man endowed with a keen,
literary nose could form an intelligent opinion, after a careful
perusal of the title-page, and a glance at the preface. A man who
wrote a book naturally labored under the delusion that he was wiser or
better than the majority of his fellow-creatures, in which case you
would do moral service by convincing him of his error, inhumanity
continued to encourage authorship at the present rate, obscurity would
soon become a claim to immortality. If a writer informed you that his
work "filled a literary void," his conceit was reprehensible, and on
moral grounds he ought to be chastised; if he told you that he had
only "yielded to the urgent request of his friends," it was only fair
to insinuate that his friends must have had very long ears.
Nevertheless, Dannevig's reviews were for about a month a very
successful feature of our paper. They might be described as racy
little essays, bristling with point and epigram, on some subject
suggested by the title-pages of current volumes. At the end of that
time, however, books began to grow scarce in our office, and before
another month was at an end, we had no more need of a reviewer. My
friend was then to have his last trial as a reporter.
One of his first experiences in this new capacity was at a
mass-meeting preceding an important municipal election. Not daring to
send his "copy" to the printer without revision, I determined to
sacrifice two or three hours' sleep, and to await his return. But the
night wore on, the clock struck twelve, one, and two, and no Dannevig
appeared. I began to grow anxious; our last form went to press at four
o'clock, and I had left a column and a half open for his expected
report. Not wishing to resort to dead matter, I hastily made some
selections from a fresh magazine, and sent them to the foreman.
The next day, about noon, a policeman brought me the following note,
written in pencil, on a leaf torn from a pocket-book.