GETTING TO KNOW MR. PULITZER
As time passed, my relations with Mr. Pulitzer became more agreeable. He
had given me fair warning that the first few weeks of my trial would be
more or less unpleasant; a month at Cap Martin and a month on the yacht
had amply verified his prediction.
But this period of probation, laborious and nerve-racking as it was,
enabled me to appreciate how important it was for J. P. to put to a
severe test of ability, tact and good temper any one whom he intended to
attach to his personal staff.
His total blindness placed him completely in the hands of those around
him, and, in order that he might enjoy that sense of perfect security
without which his life would have been intolerable, it was necessary
that he should be able to repose absolute confidence in the loyalty and
intelligence of his companions.
It was not with reference to his blindness alone that the qualifications
of his secretaries were measured. Indeed, to the loss of his sight he
had become, in some measure, reconciled; what really dominated every
other consideration was the need of being able to meet the peculiar
conditions which had arisen through the complete breakdown of his
nervous system.
I have spoken of his extreme sensitiveness to noise. It is impossible to
give any description of this terrible symptom which shall be in any way
adequate. Many of us suffer torment through the hideous clamor which
appears to be inseparable from modern civilization; but to Mr. Pulitzer
even the sudden click of a spoon against a saucer, the gurgle of water
poured into a glass, the striking of a match, produced a spasm of
suffering. I have seen him turn pale, tremble, break into a cold
perspiration at some sound which to most people would have been scarcely
audible.
When we were on the yacht every one was compelled to wear rubber-soled
shoes. When Mr. Pulitzer was asleep that portion of the deck which was
over his bedroom was roped off so that no one could walk over his head;
and each door which gave access to the rooms above his cabin was
provided with a brass plate on which was cut the legend: "This door must
not be opened when Mr. Pulitzer is asleep."
With every resource at his command which ingenuity could suggest and
money procure, the one great unsolved problem of his later years was to
obtain absolute quietness at all times. At his magnificent house in New
York, at his beautiful country home at Bar Harbor he had spent tens of
thousands of dollars in a vain effort to procure the one luxury which he
prized above all others. On the yacht the conditions in this respect
were as nearly perfect as possible; but some noise was inseparable from
the ship's work--letting go the anchor, heaving it up again, blowing the
foghorn, and so on--though most of the ordinary noises had been
eliminated.
As an instance of the constant care which was taken to save Mr. Pulitzer
from noise I remember that for some days almonds were served with our
dessert at dinner, but that they suddenly ceased to form part of our
menu. Being fond of almonds, I asked the chief steward why they had
stopped serving them. After a little hesitation he said that it had been
done at the suggestion of the butler, who had noticed that I broke the
almonds in half before I ate them and that the noise made by their
snapping was very disagreeable to Mr. Pulitzer.
With the best intentions in the world, our meals were now and then
disturbed by noise. A knife suddenly slipped with a loud click against a
plate, a waiter dropped a spoon on a silver tray, or some one knocked
over a glass. We were all in such a state of nervous tension that
whenever one of these little accidents occurred we jumped in our chairs
as though a pistol had been fired, and looked at J. P. with horrified
expectancy.
There could be no doubt whatever as to the effect these noises had upon
him. He winced as a dog winces when you crack a whip over him; the only
question was whether by a powerful effort he could regain his composure
or whether his suffering would overcome his self-restraint to the extent
of making him gloomy or querulous during the rest of the meal.
The effect by no means ceased when we rose from table. If by bad luck
two or three noises occurred at dinner--and our excessive anxiety in the
matter was sometimes our undoing--Mr. Pulitzer was so upset that he
would pass a sleepless night. This in its turn meant a day during which
his tortured body made itself master of his mind, and plunged him into a
state of profound dejection.
Like most people who suffer acutely from noise Mr. Pulitzer was very
differently affected by different kinds of noise. To any noise which was
necessary, such as that caused by letting go the anchor, he could make
himself indifferent; but very few noises were included in this category.
What caused him the most acute suffering was a noise which, while it
inflicted pain upon him, neither gave pleasure to any one else nor
achieved a useful purpose. Loud talking, whistling, slamming doors,
carelessness in handling things, the barking of dogs, the "kick" of
motor boats, these were the noises which made his existence miserable.
At the back of his physical reaction was a mental reaction which
intensified every shock to his nerves. He complained, and with justice,
that, leaving out of consideration an occasional noise which was purely
the result of accident, his life was made a burden by the utter
indifference of the majority of human beings to the rights of others.
What right, he asked, had any one to run a motor boat with a machine so
noisy that it destroyed the peace of a whole harbor? Above all, what
right had such a person to come miles out to sea and cruise around the
yacht, merely to gratify idle curiosity?
He applied the same test to people who shout at one another in the
streets, who whistle at the top of their lungs, or leave doors to slam
in the faces of those behind them.
His resentment against these practices was made the more bitter by the
knowledge that he was absolutely helpless in the matter whenever he came
within hearing distance of an ill-bred person.
There was yet another element in this which added to his misery. He said
to me once, when we had been driven off the plage at Mentone by two
American tourists of the worst type, who at a hundred yards' distance
from each other were yelling their views as to which hotel they proposed
to meet at for lunch, "I can never forget that when I was a young man in
the full vigor of my health I used to regard other people's complaints
about noise as being merely an affectation. I would even make a noise
deliberately in order to annoy any one who forced the absurd pretense
upon my notice. Well, Mr. Ireland, I swear my punishment has been heavy
enough."
To revert, however, to Mr. Pulitzer's dependence on those around him, it
must be remembered that nothing could reach him except through the
medium of speech. The state of his bank account, the condition of his
investments, the reports about The World, his business correspondence,
the daily news in which he was so deeply interested, everything upon
which he based his relation with the affairs of life he had to accept at
second hand.
It might be supposed that under these circumstances Mr. Pulitzer was
easily deceived, that when there was no evil intention, for instance,
but simply a desire to spare him annoyance, the exercise of a little
ingenuity could shield him from anything likely to wound his feelings or
excite his anger. As a matter of fact I have never known a man upon whom
it would not have been easier to practice a deception. His blindness, so
far from being a hindrance to him in reaching the truth, was an aid.
Two instances will serve to illustrate the point. Suppose that I found
in the morning paper an article which I thought would stir J. P. up and
spoil his day: when I was called to read to him I had no means of
knowing whether the man whom I replaced had taken the same view as
myself and had skipped the article or whether he had, deliberately or
inadvertently, read it to him. The same argument applied to the man who
was to follow me. If I read the article to him I might find out later
that my predecessor had omitted it, or, if I omitted it, that my
successor had read it.
In either event one of us would be in the wrong; and it was impossible
to tell in advance whether the man who read it would be blamed for lack
of discretion or praised for his good judgment, as everything depended
upon the exact mood in which Mr. Pulitzer happened to be.
It was an awkward dilemma for the secretary, for, if he did not read it
and another man did, Mr. Pulitzer might very well interpret the first
man's caution as an effort to hoodwink him, or the second man's boldness
as an exhibition of indifference to his feelings, or, what was more
likely still, fasten one fault upon one man and the other upon the
other.
The same problem presented itself from a different direction. Often, Mr.
Pulitzer would take out of his pocket a bundle of papers--newspaper
clippings, letters, statistical reports, and memoranda of various kinds.
Handing them to his companion he would say:
"Look through these and see if there is a letter with the London post
mark, and a sheet of blue paper with some figures on it."
You could never tell what was behind these inquiries. Sometimes he was
content to know that the papers were there, sometimes he asked you to
read them, and as he might very well have them read to him by several
people during the day he had a perfect check on all printed or written
matter once it was in his hands.
In addition to all this his exquisite sense of hearing enabled him to
detect the slightest variation in your tone of voice. If you hesitated
or betrayed the least uneasiness his suspicions were at once aroused and
he took steps to verify from other sources any statement you made under
such circumstances.
It will be readily understood that with his keen and analytic mind Mr.
Pulitzer very soon discovered exactly what kind of work was best suited
to the capacities of each of his secretaries. Thus to Mr. Paterson was
assigned the reading of history and biography, to Mr. Pollard, a Harvard
man and the only American on the personal staff during my time, novels
and plays in French and English, to Herr Mann German literature of all
kinds. Thwaites was chiefly occupied with Mr. Pulitzer's correspondence,
and Craven with the yacht accounts, though they, as well as myself, had
roving commissions covering the periodical literature of France,
Germany, England, and America.
This division of our reading was by no means rigid; it represented Mr.
Pulitzer's view of our respective spheres of greatest utility; but it
was often disturbed by one or another of us going on sick leave or
falling a victim to the weather when we were at sea.
Subject to such chances Pollard always read to Mr. Pulitzer during his
breakfast hour, and Mann during his siesta, while the reading after
dinner was pretty evenly divided between Pollard, Paterson, and myself.
If Mr. Pulitzer once got it into his head that a particular man was
better than any one else for a particular class of work nothing could
reconcile him to that man's absence when such work was to be done.
An amusing instance of this occurred on an occasion when Pollard was
sea-sick and could not read to J. P. at breakfast. I was hurriedly
summoned to take his place. I was dumbfounded, for I had never before
been called upon for this task, and Mr. Pulitzer had often held it up to
me as the last test of fitness, the charter of your graduation. I had
nothing whatever prepared of the kind which J. P. required at that time,
and I knew that upon the success of his breakfast might very well depend
the general complexion of his whole day.
In desperation I rushed into Pollard's cabin, and its unhappy occupant,
with a generosity which even seasickness could not chill, gave me a
bundle of Spectators, Athenaeums, and Literary Digests, with pencil
marks in the margins indicating exactly what he had intended to read in
the ordinary course of things. I breathed a sigh of relief and hastened
to the library, where I found J. P. very nervous and out of sorts after
a bad night.
He immediately began to deplore Pollard's absence, on the ground that it
was impossible for anyone to know what to read to him at breakfast
without years of experience and training. I said nothing, feeling secure
with Pollard's prepared "breakfast food," as we called it, in front of
me. I awaited only his signal to begin reading, confident that I could
win laurels for myself without robbing Pollard, whose wreath was firmly
fixed on his brow.
Alas for my hopes! My very first sentence destroyed my chances, for I
had the misfortune to begin reading something which he had already
heard. Nothing annoyed him more than this; and we all made a habit of
writing "Dead" across any article in a periodical as soon as J. P. had
had it, so that we could keep off each other's trails. I am willing to
believe that this was the first and only time that Pollard ever forgot
to kill an article after he had read it, but it was enough, in the
deplorable state of Mr. Pulitzer's nerves that morning, to inflict a
wound upon my reputation as a breakfast-time reader which months did not
suffice to heal.
With such a bad start Mr. Pulitzer immediately concluded that I was
useless, and he worked himself up into such a state about it that
passage after passage, carefully marked by Pollard, was greeted with,
"Stop! Stop! For God's sake!" or,
"Next! Next!" or,
"My God! Is there much more of that?" or,
"Well, Mr. Ireland, isn't there ANYTHING interesting in all those
papers?"
I bore up manfully against this until he made the one remark I could not
stand.
"Now, Mr. Ireland," he said, his voice taking on a tone of gentle
reproach, "I know you've done your best, but it is very bad. If you
don't believe me, just take those papers to Mr. Pollard when he feels
better; don't disturb him now when he's ill; and show him what you read
to me. Now, just for fun, I'd like you to do that. He will tell you that
there is not a single line which you have read that he would have read
had he been in your place. I hope I haven't been too severe with you;
but I hold up my hands and swear that Mr. Pollard wouldn't have read me
a line of that rubbish."
This was too much! Carefully controlling my voice so that no trace of
malice should be detected in it, I replied:
"I took these papers off Mr. Pollard's table a moment before I came to
you, and the parts I have read are the parts he had marked, with the
intention of reading them to you himself."
I thought I had J. P. cornered. It was before I learned that there was
no such thing as cornering J. P.
Leaning toward me, and putting a hand on my shoulder, he said:
"Now, boy, don't be put out about this. I do believe, honestly, that you
did your best; but you should not make excuses. When you are wrong,
admit it, and try and benefit by my advice. You will find a very natural
explanation of your mistake. Perhaps the passages Mr. Pollard marked
were the ones he did NOT intend to read to me, or perhaps you took the
wrong set of papers; some perfectly natural explanation I am sure."
That night at dinner, when I was still smarting under the sense of
injustice born of my morning's experience, J. P. gave me an opening
which I could not allow to pass unused.
Turning to me during a pause in the conversation, he asked:
"And what have YOU been doing this afternoon, Mr. Ireland?"
A happy inspiration flashed across my mind, and I replied:
"I've been making a rough draft of a play, sir."
"Well, my God! I didn't know you wrote plays."
"Very seldom, at any rate; but I had an idea this morning that I
couldn't resist."
"What is it to be called?" inquired J. P.
"'The Importance of being Pollard,'" I answered, whereupon J. P. and
everyone else at the table had a good laugh. They had all been through a
breakfast with J. P. when Pollard was away, and could sympathize with my
feelings.
Mr. Pulitzer was very sensible of the difficulties which lay in
everybody's path at the times when lack of sleep or a prolonged attack
of pain had made him excessively irritable; and when he had recovered
from one of these periods of strain, and was conscious of having been
rough in his manner, he often took occasion to make amends.
Sometimes he would do this when we were at table, adopting a humorous
tone as he said, "I'm afraid so-and-so will never forgive me for the way
I treated him this afternoon; but I want to say that he really read me
an excellent story and read it very well, and that I am grateful to him.
I was feeling wretchedly ill and had a frightful headache, and if I said
anything that hurt his feelings I apologize."
Once, during my weeks of probation, when J. P. felt that he had carried
his test of my good temper beyond reason, he stopped suddenly in our
walk, laid a hand on my shoulder, and asked:
"What do you feel when I am unreasonable with you? Do you feel angry? Do
you bear malice?"
"Not at all," I replied. "I suppose my feeling is very much like that of
a nurse for a patient. I realize that you are suffering and that you are
not to be held responsible for what you do at such times."
"I thank you for that, Mr. Ireland," he replied. "You never said
anything which pleased me more. Never forget that I am blind, and that I
am in pain most of the time."
A matter which I had reason to notice at a very early stage of my
acquaintance with Mr. Pulitzer was that when he was in a bad mood it was
the worst possible policy to offer no resistance to his pressure. It was
part of his nature to go forward in any direction until he encountered
an obstacle. When he reached one he paused before making up his mind
whether he would go through it or round it. The further he went the more
interested he became, his purpose always being to discover a boundary,
whether of your knowledge, of your patience, of your memory, or of your
nervous endurance.
He never respected a man who did not at some point stand up and resist
him. After the line had once been drawn at that point, and his curiosity
had been gratified, he was always careful not to approach it too
closely; and it was only on the rare occasions when he was in
exceptionally bad condition that any clash occurred after the first one
had been settled.
I put off my own little fight for a long time, partly because I was very
much affected by the sight of his wretchedness, and partly because I did
not at first realize how necessary it was for him to find out just how
far my self-control could be depended upon. As soon as this became clear
to me I determined to seize the first favorable opportunity which
presented itself of getting into my intrenchments and firing a blank
cartridge or two.
It was after I had been with him about a month that my chance came. I
had noticed that his manner toward me was slowly but steadily growing
more hostile, and I had been expecting daily to receive my dismissal
from the courteous hands of Dunningham, or to find myself unable to go
further with the ordeal.
Finally, I consulted Dunningham, and was informed by him, to my great
surprise, that I was doing very well and that Mr. Pulitzer was pleased
with me. This information cleared the ground in front of me, and that
afternoon when I was called to walk with Mr. Pulitzer I decided to put
out a danger signal if I was hard pressed.
Everything favored such a course. J. P. had enjoyed a good siesta and
was feeling unusually well; if, therefore, he was very disagreeable I
would know that it was from design and not from an attack of nerves.
Furthermore, he selected a subject of conversation in regard to which I
was as well, if not better, informed than he was--a question relating to
British Colonial policy.
The moment I began to speak I saw that his object was to drive me to the
wall. He flatly contradicted me again and again, insinuated that I had
never met certain statesmen whose words I repeated, and, finally, after
I had concluded my arguments in support of the view I was advancing, he
said in an angry tone, assumed for the occasion, of course:
"Mr. Ireland, I am really distressed that we should have had this
discussion. I had hoped that, with years of training and advice, I might
hare been able to make something out of you; but any man who could
seriously hold the opinion you have expressed, and could attempt to
justify it with the mass of inaccuracies and absurdities that you have
given me, is simply a damned fool."
"I am sorry you said that, Mr. Pulitzer," I replied in a very serious
voice.
"Why, for God's sake, you don't mind my calling you a damned fool, do
you?"
"Not in the least, sir. But when you call me a damned fool you shatter
an ideal I held about you."
"What's that? An ideal about me? What do you mean?"
"Well, sir, years before I met you I had heard that if there was one
thing above all others which distinguished you from all other
journalists it was that you had the keenest nose for news of any man
living."
"What has that to do with my calling you a damned fool?"
"Simply this, that the fact that I'm a damned fool hasn't been news to
me any time during the past twenty years."
He saw the point at once, laughed heartily and, putting an arm round my
shoulders, as was his habit with all of us when he wished to show a
friendly feeling or take the edge off a severe rebuke, said:
"Now, boy, you're making fun of me, and you must not make fun of a poor
old blind man. Now, then, I take it all back; I shouldn't have called
you a damned fool."
It was from this moment that my relations with Mr. Pulitzer began to
improve.
A few days after the incident which I have just related we dropped
anchor in the Bay of Naples, and Mr. Pulitzer announced his intention of
sailing for New York by a White Star boat the following afternoon. He
asked me to go with him; and I accepted this invitation as the sign that
my period of probation was over.
Everything was prepared for our departure. Dunningham worked
indefatigably. He went aboard the White Star boat, arranged for the
accommodation of our party, had partitions knocked down so that Mr.
Pulitzer could have a private diningroom and a library, and convoyed
aboard twenty or thirty trunks and cases containing books, mineral
waters, wines, cigars, fruit, special articles of diet, clothes, fur
coats, rugs, etc., for J. P.
We all packed our belongings, telegraphed to our friends, sent ashore
for the latest issues of the magazines, and sat around in deck chairs
waiting for the word to follow our things aboard the liner.
After half an hour of suspense Dunningham came out of the library, where
he had been in consultation with J. P., and as he advanced toward us we
rose and made our way to the gangway, where one of the launches was
swinging to her painter.
Dunningham, smiling and imperturbable as ever, raised his hand and said,
"No, gentlemen, Mr. Pulitzer has changed his mind; we are not going to
America. We remain on the yacht and sail this afternoon for Athens."
He disappeared over the side, and an hour or two later returned with the
chef and the butler and one of the saloon stewards, who had gone aboard
the liner to make things ready, and some tons of baggage.
We sailed just as the White Star boat cleared the end of the mole. When
she passed us, within a hundred yards, she dipped her flag. I was
walking with Mr. Pulitzer at the time and mentioned the exchange of
salutes. He was silent for a few minutes. Then he asked, "Has she passed
us?" "Yes," I replied, "she's half-a-mile ahead of us now." "Have you
got your pad with you? Just make a note to ask Thwaites to cable to New
York from the next port we call at and tell someone to send two hundred
of the best Havana cigars to the captain. That man has some sense. Most
captains would have blown their damned whistle when they dipped their
flag. Have a note written to the captain telling him that I appreciated
his consideration."
Our voyage to Athens and thence, through the Corinth Canal, back to
Mentone, was free from incident. J. P. discussed the possibility of
going to Constantinople or to Venice, but our cabled inquiries about the
weather brought discouraging replies describing an unusually cold
season, and these projects were abandoned.
About this time Mr. Pulitzer's health showed a marked improvement, which
was reflected in the most agreeable manner in the general conditions of
life on the yacht. He had been worried for some weeks about his plans
for going to New York, and this had interfered with his sleep, had
increased his nervousness and aggravated every symptom of his physical
weakness. With this matter finally disposed of he could look forward to
a peaceful cruise, during which he would be able to catch up with his
careful reading of the marked file of The World, and thus remove a
weight from his mind.
He detested having work accumulate on his hands, but when his health was
worse than usual this was unavoidable. He always drove himself to the
last ounce of his endurance, and it was only when his condition
indicated an imminent collapse that he would consent to drop everything
except light reading, and to spend a few days out at sea without calling
anywhere for letters, papers, or cables.
It was during this, our last, cruise in the Mediterranean that I
discovered that Mr. Pulitzer was one of the best and most fascinating
talkers I had ever heard. Once in a while, when he was feeling cheerful
after a good night's rest and a pleasant day's reading, he monopolized
the conversation at lunch or dinner. He was generally more willing to
talk when we took our meals at a large round table on deck, for he loved
the sea breeze and was soothed by it.
When he talked he simply compelled your attention. I often felt that, if
he had not made his career otherwise, he might have been one of the
world's greatest actors, or one of its most popular orators. In
flexibility of tone, in variety of gesture, in the change of his facial
expression he was the peer of anyone I have seen on the stage.
To an extraordinary flow of language he added a range of information and
a vividness of expression truly astonishing. His favorite themes were
politics and the lives of great men. To his monologues on the former
subject he brought a ripe wisdom, based upon the most extensive reading
and the shrewdest observation, and quickened by the keenest enthusiasm.
He was by no means a political bigot; and there was not a political
experiment, from the democracy of the Greeks to the referendum in
Switzerland, with the details of which he was not perfectly familiar.
Although he was a convinced believer in the Republican form of
government, having, as he expressed it, "no use for the King business,"
he was fully alive to the peculiar dangers and difficulties with which
modern progress has confronted popular institutions.
When the publication of some work like Rosebery's Chatham or Monypenny's
Disraeli afforded an occasion, Mr. Pulitzer would spend an hour before
we left the table in giving us a picture of some exciting crisis in
English politics, the high lights picked out in pregnant phrases of
characterization, in brilliant epitome of the facts, in spontaneous
epigram, and illustrative anecdote. Whether he spoke of the Holland
House circle, of the genius of Cromwell, of Napoleon's campaigns, or
sought to point a moral from the lives of Bismarck, Metternich, Louis
XI, or Kossuth, every sentence was marked by the same penetrating
analysis, the same facility of expression, the same clearness of
thought.
On rare occasions he talked of his early days, telling us in a charming,
simple, and unaffected manner of the tragic and humorous episodes with
which his youth had been crowded. Of the former I recall a striking
description of a period during which he filled two positions in St.
Louis, one involving eight hours' work during the day, the other eight
hours during the night. Four of the remaining eight were devoted to
studying English.
His first connection with journalism arose out of an experience which he
related with a wealth of detail which showed how deeply it had been
burned into his memory.
When he arrived in St. Louis he soon found himself at the end of his
resources, and was faced with the absolute impossibility of securing
work in that city. In company with forty other men he applied at the
office of a general agent who had advertised for hands to go down the
Mississippi and take up well-paid posts on a Louisiana sugar plantation.
The agent demanded a fee of five dollars from each applicant, and, by
pooling their resources, the members of this wretched band managed to
meet the charge. The same night they were taken on board a steamer which
immediately started down river. At three o'clock in the morning they
were landed on the river bank about forty miles below St. Louis, at a
spot where there was neither house, road, nor clearing. Before the
marooned party had time to realize its plight the steamer had
disappeared.
A council of war was held, and it was decided that they should tramp
back to St. Louis, and put a summary termination to the agent's career
by storming his office and murdering him. Whether or not this reckless
program would have been carried out it is impossible to say, for when,
three days later, the ragged army arrived in the city, worn out with
fatigue and half dead from hunger, the agent had decamped.
A reporter happened to pick up the story, and by mere chance met
Pulitzer and induced him to write out in German the tale of his
experiences. This account created such an impression on the mind of the
editor through whose hands it passed that Pulitzer was offered, and
accepted, with the greatest misgivings, as he solemnly assured us, a
position as reporter on the Westliche Post.
The event proved that there had been no grounds for J. P.'s modest
doubts. After he had been some time on the paper, things went so badly
that two reporters had to be got rid of. The editor kept Pulitzer on the
staff, because he felt that if anyone was destined to force him out of
the editorial chair it was not a young, uneducated foreigner, who could
hardly mumble half-a-dozen words of English. The editor was mistaken.
Within a few years J. P. not only supplanted him but became half-
proprietor of the paper.
Another interesting anecdote of his early days, which he told with great
relish, related to his experience as a fireman on a Mississippi
ferryboat. His limited knowledge of English was regarded by the captain
as a personal affront, and that fire-eating old-timer made it his
particular business to let young Pulitzer feel the weight of his
authority. At last the overwork and the constant bullying drove J. P.
into revolt, and he left the boat after a violent quarrel with the
captain.
Whenever J. P. reached this point in the story, and I heard him tell it
several times, his face lighted up with amusement, and he had to stop
until he had enjoyed a good laugh.
"Well, my God!" he would conclude, "about two years later, when I had
learned English and studied some law and been made a notary public, this
very same captain walked into my office in St. Louis one day to have
some documents sealed. As soon as he saw me he stopped short, as if he
had seen a ghost, and said, "Say, ain't you the damned cuss that I fired
off my boat?"
"I told him yes, I was. He was the most surprised man I ever saw, but
after he had sworn himself hoarse he faced the facts and gave me his
business."
Mr. Pulitzer always declared that the proudest day of his life, the
occasion on which his vanity was most tickled, was when he was elected
to the Missouri Legislature. Things were evidently run in a rather
happy-go-lucky fashion in those early days, since, as he admitted with a
reminiscent smile, he was absolutely disqualified for election, being
neither an American citizen nor of age.
Mr. Pulitzer's anecdotes about himself always ended in one way. He would
break off suddenly and exclaim, "For Heaven's sake, why do you let me
run on like this; as soon as a man gets into the habit of talking about
his past adventures he might just as well make up his mind that he is
growing old and that his intellect is giving way."
It was this strong disinclination for personal reminiscence which
prevented Mr. Pulitzer, despite many urgent appeals, from writing his
autobiography. It is a thousand pities that he adhered to this
resolution, for his career, as well in point of interest as in
achievement and picturesqueness, would have stood the test of comparison
with that of any man whose life-story has been preserved in literature.