THE PRETENDER

In deference to the opinion of the publishers the Author has consented to certain alterations being made in his work.

THE PRETENDER
A Story of the Latin Quarter

BY
ROBERT W. SERVICE
Author of “Songs of a Sourdough,” “Trail
of ’98,” etc.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1914

Copyright, Canada, 1914
By ROBERT W. SERVICE
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

THE PRETENDER

“Of Books and Scribes there are no end:

This Plague—and who can doubt it?

Dismays me so, I’ve sadly penned

Another book about it.”

CONTENTS

BOOK I—THE CHALLENGE

CHAPTER I
THE HAPPIEST YOUNG MAN IN MANHATTAN

To have omnibus tastes and an automobile income—how ironic?

With this reflexion I let myself collapse into a padded chair of transcendent comfort, lit a cigarette and inspected once more the amazing bank-book. Since I had seen it last several credit entries had been made—over twenty thousand dollars; and in the meantime, dawdling and dreaming in the woods of Maine, all I had managed to squander was a paltry thousand. Being a man of imagination I sought for a simile. As I sat there by the favourite window of my favourite club I could see great snowflakes falling in the quiet square, and at that moment it seemed to me that I too was standing under a snowfall, a snowfall of dollars steadily banking me about.

For a moment I revelled in the charming vision, then like a flash it changed. Now I could see two figures locked in Homeric combat. Like a serene over-soul I watched them, I, philosopher, life-critic; for was not one of them James H. Madden, a man of affairs, the other, J. Horace Madden, dilettante and dreamer.... Look! from that clutter of stale snow a form springs triumphant. Hurrah! It is the near-poet, the man on the side of the angels.— And so rejoiced was I at this issue that I regarded the little bank-book almost resentfully.

“Figures, figures,” I sighed, “what do you mean to me? Crabbed symbols on a smudgy page! can you buy for me that fresh Spring-morning feeling in the brain, that rapture of a fine thing finely done? Ah no! the luxury you spell means care and worry. In comfort is contentment. And am I not content? Nay! in all Manhattan is there man more happy? Young, famous, free—could life possibly be more charming? And so in my tower of tranquillity let me work and dream; and every now and then, little book, your totals will grow absurd, and I will look at you and say: ‘Figures, figures, what do you mean to me?’

“But, after all,” I went on to reflect, “Money is not so utterly a nuisance. Pleasant indeed to think that when most are pondering over the problem of the permanent meal-ticket, you are yourself well settled on the sunny side of Easy Street. Poets have piped of Arcady, have chorused of Bohemia, have expressed their enthusiasm for Elysian fields, but who has come to chant the praise of Easy Street? Yet surely it is the kindliest of all? Behind its smiling windows are no maddening constraints, no irking servitudes, no tyranny of time. Just sunshine, laughter, mockery of masters— Oh, a thousand times blessed, golden, glorious Easy Street!”

Here I lighted a fresh cigarette and settled more snugly in that chair of kingly comfort.

“Behold in me,” I continued lazily, “a being specially favoured of the gods. Born if not with a silver spoon in my mouth at least with one of a genteel quality of nickel, blest with a boyhood notably cheering and serene, granted while still in my teens success that others fight for to the grave’s edge, untouched by a single sorrow, unthwarted by a solitary defeat—does it not seem as if my path in life had been ever preceded by an Olympian steam roller macadamising the way?

“True, as to appearance, the gods have failed to flatter me. If you, gentle reader, who are as perfect as the Apollo Belvedere, gaze, at your chiselled features in the silver side of your morning tea-pot, you will get a good idea of mine. But there—I refer you to a copy of Wisdom for Women, the well-known feminist Weekly. It contains an illustrated interview, one of that celebrated series, Lions in their Dens. Harken unto this:

“A tall, tight-lipped young man, eager, yet abstracted; eyes quizzical, mouth a straight line, brow of a dreamer, chin of a flirtatious stockbroker. His gleaming glasses suggest the journalist, his prominent nose the tank-town tragedian. Add to that that he has a complexion unæsthetically sanguine, and that his flaxen hair, receding from his forehead, gives him a fictitious look of intellectuality, and you have a combination easier to describe than to imagine....”

“What a blessing it is we cannot see ourselves as others see us! How it would fill life with intolerable veracities! Dear lady who wrote the above, I can forgive you for the Roman nose, for the flirtatious chin, nay, even for the fictitious intellectuality of my noble brow, but for one thing I can never think of you with joy. You wrote of me that I was ‘a mould of fashion and a glass of form.’ Since then, alas! I have been compelled to live up to your description. Bohemian to the backbone, lover of the flannel suit of freedom and the silken shirt of ease, how I have suffered in such clutch of comme-il-faut no tongue can tell. Yet thanks to a Fifth Avenue tailor even a little sartorial success has fallen to my lot.”

Success! some men seem to have a magic power of attracting it, and I think I must be one. Sitting there in the window of the club, as I watched the shadows steal into the square, and the snow thicken to a fluttering curtain I positively purred with satisfaction. Behind me the silent library was lit only by a fire of glowing coals. The jocund light gleamed on the carved oak of the book-cases, and each diamond pane winked jovially. Yet cheerful though it was my thoughts were far more rosy.

But now my reverie was being broken. Two men were approaching, and by their voices I knew them to be Quince the critic and Vaine the poet. The first was a representative of the School of Suds, the second an exponent of the School of Sediment; but as neither were included in the number of my more intimate enemies I did not turn to greet them.

Goring Quince is a stall-fed man with a purple face, cotton-coloured hair and supercilious eyebrows. He is an incubator of epigrams. His articles are riots of rhetoric, and it is marvellous how completely he can drown a poor little idea in a vat of verbiage.

Herrick Vaine is a puffy, pimply person, with a mincing manner and an emasculated voice. He might have been a poet of note but for two things: while reading his work you always have a feeling that you have seen something oddly like it before; and after you have read it all you retain is a certain dark-brown taste on the mental palate. Otherwise he is all right.

And now, having described the principals, let me record the little dialogue to which I was the unseen listener.

Vaine (with elaborate carelessness): By the way, you haven’t read my latest book, I suppose?

Quince (cooingly): Why yes, my boy. I lost no time in reading it. I positively wallowed—I mean revelled in it. Reminds me of Baudelaire in spots. Without you and a chosen few what would literature be?

Vaine (enraptured): How lovely of you to say so. You know I value your opinion more than any in the world.

Quince (waving his gold-rimmed eyeglasses): Not at all. Merely my duty as a watchdog of letters. Yes, I thought your Songs Saturnalian in a class by itself; but now I can say without being accused of a lapse of literary judgment that your Poems Plutonian marks a distinct epoch in modern poetry. There is an undefinable something in your work, a je ne sais quoi ... you know.

Vaine: Yes; thank you, thank you.

Quince: Is it selling, by the way?

Vaine: Thank heaven, no! How banal! Popular success would imply artistic failure. To the public true art must always be inaccessible. If ever I find my work becoming bourgeois, it will be because I have committed artistic suicide. On my bended knees I pray to be delivered from popularity.

Quince: I see. You prefer the award of posterity to the reward of prosperity. Well, no doubt time will bring you your meed of recognition. In the meantime give me a copy of the poems, and I will review it in next week’s Compass.

Vaine: Will you indeed. That honour alone will repay me for writing it. By the way, I imagine I saw a copy in the library. Let me look.
(As Vaine had put it there himself his doubt seemed a little superfluous. He switched on a light, and from the ranked preciosity of a certain shelf he selected a slim, gilt volume.)

Vaine: Poems Plutonian.

Quince (taking it in his fat, soft hands): How utterly exquisite! What charming generosity of margin!

Vaine: Yes; you know the great fault of books, to my mind, is that they contain printed matter. Some day I dream of writing a book that shall be nearly all margin, a book from which the crudely obvious shall be eliminated, a book of exquisite intrusion, of supreme suggestion, where magic words like rosaries of pearls shall glimmer down the pages. I really think that books are the curse of literature. If every writer were compelled to grave his works on brass and copper from how much that is vain and vapid would we not be delivered?

Quince: Ah, yes! Still books have their advantages. Here, for example, am I going to burn the incense of a cigar before the putrescent—I mean the iridescent altar of art. Now if Poems Plutonian were inscribed on brass or stone I confess I should hesitate. What are those things?
(He pointed to a separate shelf, on which stood nine volumes with somewhat aggressive covers.)

Vaine: Well may you ask. Brazen strumpets who have stumbled into the temple of Apollo. These, my dear sir, are the so-called novels of Norman Dane. You see, as a member of the club, he is supposed to give the library a copy of his books. We all hoped he wouldn’t, but he came egregiously forward. Of course we couldn’t refuse the monstrous things.

Quince: No, I understand. What’s this? The Yellow Streak: Two hundred thousand! The Dipsomaniac: Sixth Edition!! Rattlesnake Ranch: Tenth Impression!!! Why, what a disgusting lot of money the man must be making!

Vaine: Yes, the Indiana Idol, the Boy Bestsellermonger. A perfect bounder as regards Art. But he knows how to truckle to the mob. His books sell by the ton. They’re so bad, they’re almost good.

Quince (with surprising feeling): There! I don’t agree with you. He doesn’t even know how to please the public. It takes a clever man to do that, and Norman Dane is only a dry-goods clerk spoiled. No, the point is—he is the public, the apotheosis of the vulgar intelligence. Don’t think for a moment he is writing down to the level of the mob. He charms the great half-educated because he himself belongs to them. He can’t help it.

Vaine: Yes, but there are so many plebeian novelists. How do you account for Dane’s spectacular success?

Quince: A fool’s luck! He happened to hit the psychological moment. When he leaped into the lists with The Haunted Taxicab taxis had just come out, and at the same moment there was a mania for mystery stories. Take two popular motifs, mix recklessly, spice with sentiment and sauce with sensation—there you have the recipé of a best-seller. His book fluked into favour. His publishers put their weight behind it. In a month he found himself famous from Maine to Mexico. But he couldn’t do it again; no, not in a thousand years. What has he done since? Live on his name. Step cunningly in his tracks. Bah! I tell you Norman Dane’s an upstart, a faker; to the very heart of him a shallow, ignorant pretender....

Whatever else the poor chap might be was lost in the distance as the two men moved away. For a long time after they had gone I did not stir. The fluttering snow-butterflies seemed to have become great moths, that hovered in the radiance of the nearest arc-light and dashed to a watery doom. Pensively I gazed into that greenish glamour, pulling at a burnt-out cigarette.

At last I rose, and going to the book-case regarded the nine volumes of flamboyant isolation.

“An upstart,” I sighed softly; “a faker, a pretender....”

And to tell the truth I was sorely taken aback; for you see in my hours of industry I am a maker of books and my pen name is Norman Dane.

CHAPTER II
THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS

Whether or not a sense of humour is an attribute of the Divine, I am too ignorant of theology to conjecture; but I am sure that as a sustaining power amid the tribulations of life it is one of the blessedest of dispensations.

For a moment, I must confess, the words of Quince and Vaine stung me to resentment. Being one of these people who think in moving pictures, I had a gratifying vision in which I was clutching them savagely and knocking their heads together. Then the whole thing struck me on the funny side, and a little page boy, entering to turn on the lights, must have been amazed to hear me burst into sudden laughter.

So that presently, as Mr. Quince, having spilt some cigar ash over the still uncut leaves of Poems Plutonian, was arising to daintily dust the volume, I approached him with a bright and happy smile.

“Hullo, Quince,” I began, cheerily.

He looked up. His eyes gleamed frosty interrogation, and his clipped grey moustache seemed to bristle in his purple face.

“What is it?” he grunted.

“It’s about that matter we spoke of this morning. You know I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided to go on that note of yours.”

Quince was astonished. He was also overjoyed; but his manner was elaborately off-hand.

“Ah! Thanks awfully, Madden. Only a matter of renewal, you know. Old endorser went off to Europe, and the bank got after me. Well, you’ll go on the note, then?”

“Yes, on one condition.”

“Hum! Condition! What?” he demanded anxiously.

“Well,” I said. “I believe one good turn deserves another. Now I was down at the bank this morning, and I know you’re in rather a hole about that renewal. Backers for thousand dollar notes aren’t picked up so easily. However, I’m willing to go on it if you’ll”—here I paused deliberately, “give my last book a good write up in your next Compass causerie.”

His face fell. “I’m afraid—you see, I’ve promised Vaine—”

“Oh, hang Vaine! Sidetrack him.”

“But—there’s the policy of the paper—”

“Oh, well, I’ll buy a controlling interest, and alter your policy. But, as a matter of fact, you know they’ll print anything over your name.”

“Yes—well, there are my own standards, the ideals I have fought for—”

“Rot! Look here, Quince, let’s be honest. We’re both in the writing game for what we can get out of it. We may strut and brag; but we know in our hearts there’s none of us of much account. Why, man, show me half a dozen writers of to-day who’ll be remembered twenty years after they’re dead?”

“I protest—”

“You know it’s true. We’re bagmen in a negligible day. Now, I don’t want you to alter your standards; all I want of you is to adjust them. You know that as soon as you see a book of mine coming along you get your knife out. You’ve flayed me from the start. You do it on principle. You’ve got regular formulas of abuse. My characters are sticks, my plots chaotic, my incidents melodramatic. You judge my work by your academic standards. Don’t do that. Don’t judge it as art—judge it as entertainment. Does it entertain?”

“Possibly it does—the average, unthinking man.”

“Precisely. He’s my audience. My business is to amuse him, to take him outside of himself for an hour or two.”

“It’s our duty to elevate his taste.”

“Fiddlesticks! my dear chap. I don’t take myself so seriously as that. And, anyway, it’s hopeless. If you don’t give him the stuff he wants, he won’t take any. You’ll never educate the masses to anything higher than the satisfaction of their appetites. They want frenzied fiction, plot, action. The men want a good yarn, the women sentiment, and we writers want—the money.”

“It’s a sad state of affairs, I admit.”

“Well, then, admit that my books fill the bill. They’re good yarns, they’re exciting, they’re healthy. Surely they don’t deserve wholesale condemnation. So go home, my dear Quince, and begin a little screed like this:

“In the past we have frequently found occasion to deal severely with the novels of Norman Dane, and to regret that he refuses to use those high gifts he undoubtedly possesses; but on opening his latest novel, The House of a Hundred Scandals, we are agreeably surprised to note a decided awakening of artistic conscience. And so on. No one knows how to do it better than you. Bring to the bank to-morrow a proof of the article, and I’ll put my name on the back of your note.”

“I—I don’t know. I’ll think it over. Perhaps I’ve been a little too dogmatic. Let me see—Literary Criticism and the Point of View—yes, I’ll see what I can do.”

As I left him ruefully brooding over the idea I felt suddenly ashamed of myself.

“Poor old chap!” I thought; “I’ve certainly taken a mean advantage of him. Perhaps, after all, he may be right and I wrong. I begin to wonder: Have I earned success, or only achieved it? It seems to me this literary camp is divided into two bands, the sheep and the goats, and, sooner or later, a man must ask himself which he belongs to. Am I a sheep or am I a goat?”

But I quickly steeled myself. Why should I have compunction? Was I not in a land where money was the standard of success? Here then was the virtue of my bloated bank-book—Power. Let them sneer at me, these æsthetic apes, these flabby degenerates. There by the door was a group of them, and I ventured to bet that they were all in debt to their tailors. Yet they regarded me as an outsider, a barbarian. Looking around for some object to soothe my ruffled feelings, I espied the red, beefsteak-and-beer face of Porkinson, the broker. Here was a philistine, an unabashed disciple of the money god. I hailed him.

Over our second whiskey I told Porkinson of the affair in the library. He laughed a ruddy, rolling laugh.

“What do you care?” he roared raucously. “You put the stuff over and grab the coin—that’s the game, isn’t it? Let those highbrow freaks knock you all they want—you’ve got away with the goods. And, anyway, they’ve got the wrong dope. Why, I guess I’m just as level-headed as the next man, and I wouldn’t give a cent for the piffle they turn out. When I’m running to catch a train I grab one of your books every time. I know if there’s none of the boys on board to have a card game with I’ve got something to keep me from being tired between drinks. What I like about your yarns, old man, is that they keep me guessing all the time, and the fellow never gets the girl till the last page. I always skip a whole lot, I get so darned interested. I once read a book of yours clean through between breakfast and lunch.”

Thanking Porkinson for his enthusiasm, which somehow failed to elate me, I took the elevator up to my apartment on the tenth story of the club. Travers, the artist, had a studio adjoining me, and, seeing a light under his door, I knocked.

“Enter,” called Travers.

He was a little frail old man, with a peaked, grey face framed in a plenitude of iron-grey hair, and ending in a white Vandyke beard. A nervous trouble made him twitch his right eye continually, sometimes emphasising his statements with curious effect. He believed he was one of the greatest painters in the world; yet that very day three of his best pictures had been refused by the Academy.

“I knew it,” he cried excitedly; “I knew when I sent them they’d come back. It’s happened for the last ten years. They know if they hung me I’d kill every one else in the room. They’re afraid of my mountains.” (A wink.) “Their little souls can’t conceive of any scenery beyond Connecticut. But it’s the last time I’ll send.” (A wink.) “I’ll get recognition elsewhere, London, Paris; then when they want my pictures for their walls they’ll have to come and beg, yes, beg for them.” (A portentous wink.)

Every year he vowed the same thing; every year he canvassed the members of the hanging committee; every year his pictures came cruelly back; yet his faith in himself was invincible.

“I tell you what,” I said; “you might be one of the popular painters of the day if you only looked at it right. Here you go painting straight scenery as it was in the days before Adam. You object to the least hint of humanity—a hut, a bridge, a boat. My dear sir, what the General Public wants is the human, the dramatic. There’s that River Rapids picture you did two years ago, and it’s still on your hands. Now that’s good. That water’s alive, it boils; as I look at it I can hear it roar, and feel the sting of the spray. But—it’s straight water, and the G.P. won’t take its water straight. Now just paint two men in a birch-bark canoe going down these rapids. Paint in a big rock, call it A Close Shave, and you’ll sell that picture like winking.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. You’re talking like a tradesman.”

“There’s that sunset,” I went on. “It’s splendid. That colour seems to burn a hole in the canvas. But just you paint in a black cross against that smouldering sky, and see how it gives significance, aye, and poetry to the picture. Call it The Lone Grave.”

“But don’t you see,” said Travers, with some irritation, “I’m trying to express a mood of Nature. Surely there’s enough poetry in Nature without trying to drag in lone graves?”

“Not for the G.P. You’ve got to give it sentiment. Did that millionaire brewer buy anything?”

Travers sighed rather wofully.

“No, he kept on asking me where my pictures were, and I kept on telling him they weren’t anywhere, they were everywhere; they were in his own heart if he only looked deep enough. They were just moods of nature. He couldn’t see it. I believe he bought an eight by ten canvas at Rosenheimer’s Department Store: Moses Smiting the Rock.”

“There you are. He was getting more for his money. He wanted action, interest. Daresay he had the gush of water coloured to look like beer. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll give you five hundred for that thing you call Morning Mist in the Valley.”

“Sorry,” said Travers, with a look of miserable hesitation; “I don’t want to sell that. It’s the best thing I’ve done. I want to leave it to the nation.”

“All right. You know best. Good-night.”

I knew I had offered more than the market value of the picture; I knew that Travers had not sold a canvas for months; I knew that he often ate only one meal a day, and that if he chose, he could paint commercial pictures; so I could not but admire the little man who, in the face of scorn, neglect, starvation even, clung to his ideals and refused to prostitute his art. But this knowledge did not tend to restore my self-esteem, and it was in a mood of singular self-criticism I entered my room.

As I switched on the light the first thing I saw was my reflection in a large mirror. Long and grimly I gazed, hands in pockets, legs widespread, head drooping. I have often thought of that moment. It seemed as if the reflection I saw was other than myself, was, indeed, almost a stranger to me.

“Ha!” I cried, grimacing at the man in the mirror; “you’re getting found out, are you? Tell me, now, beneath your wrappings of selfishness and sham is there anything honest and essential? Is there a real You, such as might stand naked in the wind-swept spaces of eternity? Or are you, down to your very soul’s depths a player of parts?”

Then my mood changed, and I savagely paced the room.

“Oh, the fools! The hypocrites! Can’t they see that I am cleverer than they? Can’t they see that I could write their futile sonnets, their fatuous odes? But if I did, wouldn’t I starve? Am I to be blamed if I refuse? It’s all right to starve if one’s doing immortal work; but not six men in the world to-day are doing that. We’re ephemera. Our stuff serves the moment. Then take the cash, and let the credit go.”

I took off my boots, and threw them viciously into a corner.

“How Quince upset me to-night! So I made a chance hit with my first book? Well, it’s true the public were up on their toes for it. But then I would have succeeded anyway. As to catering to the mass—I admit it. I’m between the devil and the deep sea. The publishers keep rushing me for the sort of thing that will sell, and the million Porkinsons keep clamouring for the sort of thing they can read without having to think. For the sake of his theoretical wife and six children, what can a poor devil do but commercialise his ideals?”

Here I paused thoughtfully, with one arm out of my coat.

“After all, is a book of fiction not entertainment just as much as a play? There’s your audience, the public. You’ve got to try and please them, to be entertaining from cover to cover. Better be immoral than be dull. And when it comes to audiences, give me a big one of just plain ‘folks,’ to a small one of highbrows.”

With knitted brows and lips pursed doubtfully, I proceeded to wind up my watch.

“Anyway, I haven’t written for money; I’ve written for popularity. It’s nice to think you can get on a train and find some one reading your books—even if it’s only the nigger porter. True, my popularity has meant about twenty-five thousand a year to me; but it’s not my fault if my publishers insist on paying me such big royalties. And I’ve not spent the money. I’ve gone on living on my private income. Then the writing itself has been such a distraction. Lord! how I have enjoyed it! Granted that my notion of Hades would be to be condemned to read my own books, yet, such as they are, I’ve done my best with them. I’ve lived them as I wrote. I’ve laughed with joy at their humour. I’ve shed real tears (with just as much joy) at their pathos.”

I gave a wrench at my collar, expressive of savage perplexity; on which the stud shot out, and cheerfully proceeded to roll under the wardrobe.

“Perhaps I’ve done things I shouldn’t? I’ve made coincidence work overtime; I’ve grafted on love scenes so that the artist could get in one or two ‘clinch pictures.’ On my last page you’ll find the heroine clutched to the hero’s waistcoat; but—they all do it. One’s got to, or get out of the game.”

Here I disappeared for a moment; and when I re-entered, clad in pale-blue pyjamas, I was calm and cheerful again.

“So old Quince said I’d succeeded by a fluke. Well, I’d just like to bet my year’s income against his that I could make a fresh start and do the same thing all over again. By Jove! What an idea! Why not? Go away to London, cut adrift from friends and funds, fight my way up the ladder from the very bottom. After all, I’ve had the devil’s own luck, everything in my favour. It’s hardly been a fair test. Perhaps I really am a four-flusher. Even now I begin to doubt myself. It seems like a challenge.”

Switching off the light I jumped into bed.

“Life’s too appallingly prosy. Here for seven years I’ve been imagining romance; it’s time I tried to live it a little. Yes, I’ll go to-morrow.... London ... garret ... poverty ... struggle ... triumph....”

And at this point, any one caring to listen at my door might have heard issuing from those soft blankets a sound resembling the intermittent harshness of a buzz-saw going through cordwood.

CHAPTER III
GRILLED KIDNEY AND BACON

I was awakened at eight o’clock by the alarm in my watch, and lay a few minutes debating whether or not I should rise. I have always rebelled against the convention that makes us go to bed at night and get up in the morning. How much less primitive to go to bed in the morning and get up at night! But in either case we should abhor crude and violent awakenings. We should awake rhythmically, on pulsing ripples of consciousness. Personally, I should like to be awakened by gentle music, viols and harps playing soft strains of half-forgotten melodies. I should like to be roused by the breath of violets, to open my eyes to a vista of still lake on which float swans whiter than ivory.

What I did open my eyes to was a vista of shivery sunshine, steely blue sky, and snow on the roofs of the neighbouring sky-scrapers. I was indeed comfortable. Outside the heat-zone of my body the sheets were of a delectable coolness, and from head to heel I felt as if I were dissolving in some exquisite oil of ease.

Lying there enjoying that ineffable tranquillity, I subjected myself to my morning diagnosis. My soul is, I consider, a dark continent which it is my life’s business to explore. This morning, then, in my capacity of explorer, I started even as Crusoe must have done when he saw the naked footprint in the sand. Extraordinary phenomenon! I had actually awakened of the same mind as that in which I fell asleep.

Propping myself up I lit a cigarette.

“Well, young fellow,” I greeted my face in the mirror, “so we’re still doubtful of ourself? Want to make fresh start, go to London and starve in garret as per romantic formula? What foolishness! But let’s be thankful for folly. Some day we’ll be wise, and life will seem so worn and stale and grey. So here’s for London.”

With that I sprang up and disappeared into the bath-room from which you might have heard a series of grunts and groans as of some one violently dumb-belling; then a series of snorts and splutters as of some one splashing in icy water; then the hissing noise one usually associates with the rubbing down of horses. After all of which, in a pink glow and a Turkish bath-robe, appeared a radiant young man.

Taking down the receiver of my telephone I listened for a moment.

“Yes, it’s me, Miss Devereux. Give me the dining-room, please.... Dining-room?... Yes, it’s Mr. Madden speaking. I want to order breakfast.... No, not grape-fruit, I said breakfast—Grilled kidney and bacon, toast and Ceylon tea. That’s all, thank you.”

In parenthesis I may say I do my best work on kidney and bacon. There is, I find, a remarkable affinity between what I eat and what I write. Before tackling a scene of blood I indulge in a slab of beefsteak, extra rare; for tender sentiment I find there is nothing like a previous debauch on angel cake and orange pekoe; while if I have to kill any one I usually prime myself with coffee and caviare sandwiches. But as far as ordinary narrative is concerned I find kidney and bacon an excellent stimulus.

“How extremely agreeable this life is,” I reflected as I resumed dressing. “No care, no responsibility, neither jolt nor jar in the machinery. It’s almost too pleasant to be natural. Now, if I had a house, servants, a wife, the trouble would just be beginning at this time. As it is everything conspires to save me from friction. But it’ll soon be all over. I never quite realised that. My last day of gilded ease. To-day a young man of fashion in a New York club, to-morrow a skulking tramp in the steerage of an ocean liner. Yes, I’ll go in the steerage.”

Perhaps it was to heighten the contrast that I dressed with unusual care. From a score of lounging suits I selected a soft one of slatey grey; shirt, tie and socks to match; cuff-links of antique silver, and a scarf-pin of a pearl clutched in a silver claw; a hat of grey velour, and shoes with grey cloth uppers. Thus panoplied I sallied forth, a very symphony in grey.

At this early hour the dining-room was empty, and three girls flew to wait on me. For the first time it struck me as being odd. Surely, I thought, if things were as they should be, woman would not be waiting on man. Here am I, a strong, healthy brute of a male, lolling back like a lord, while these frail females fly like slaves to fulfil my desires. Yet I work three hours a day, they ten. I am rich, they painfully poor. There’s something all wrong with the world; but we’re so used to looking at wrong we’ve come to think it right.

A strange spirit of dissatisfaction was stirring in me, of desire to see life from the other side. As I took my breakfast I studied the girls, trying to imagine what they thought, how they lived. Although there were no other members in the dining-room at that moment, each waitress was obliged to remain at her post. How deadly monotonous, standing there at attention! How tired they must be by the end of the day! Then I noticed that one of them, under cover of her apron, was taking surreptitious peeps at a yellow-covered book. At that moment the lynx-eyed lady superintendent entered, caught her in the act, and proceeded to rate her soundly. I hate scenes of any kind, and this particularly pained me, for I saw that the all-too-tempting volume was a cheap edition of The Haunted Taxicab.

Then that moving picture imagination of mine began to flicker. The girl had gone from the room with tears in her eyes. Surely, thought I, she has been dismissed. A blur came between me and my plate and the film unreeled....

Ah! I see her trying to get other employment, failing again and again, sinking deeper into the mire of misery and despair. Then at last the time comes when the brave, proud heart is broken; the proud, sweet eyes flinch at another day of bitterness and failure. They recognise, they accent the end.

It is a freezing night of mid-winter, and I am walking down Broadway. Suddenly I am accosted by a girl with a hard, painted face, a girl who smiles the forced smile of fallen womanhood.

“Silvia!” I gasp.

She shrinks from me. “You!” she cries. “The author of my ruin; you, whose book I was dismissed for reading, unable to resist peering into the pages you had invested with such fatally fascinating charm....”

As the scene came up before me tears filled my eyes, and fearful that they might drop on my kidney and bacon I averted my head. At the same moment the waitress came back with a saucy giggle and resumed her post. I was somewhat dashed, nevertheless I decided it would do for a short story, and taking out my idea book I noted it down.

“Now,” I said, “let’s see the morning paper.... How lucky! The Garguantuan sails to-morrow. I’ll just catch her. Splendid!”

That histrionic temperament of mine began to thrill. Had not my whole life been dominated by my dramatic conception of myself? Student, actor, cowboy, I had played half a dozen parts, and into each I had put my whole heart. Here, then, was a new one: let me realise it quickly. So taken was I with the idea that I, who had never in my life known what it was to want a hundred dollars, retired to the reading-room, and, inspired by the kidney and bacon, took out a little gold pencil, and with it dinted in my idea book the following sonnet:

TO LITERATURE

“I, a poor, passion-goaded garreteer,

A pensive enervate of book and pen,

Who, in the bannered triumph-march of men

Lag like a sorry starveling in the rear—

Shall I not curse thee, mistress mine? I peer

Up from life’s saturnalia, and then

Shrink back a-shudder to my garret den,

Seeing no prospect of a glass of beer.

“What have I suffered, Siren, for thy sake!

What scorn endured, what happiness foregone!

What weariness and woe! What cruel ache

Of failure ’mid a thousand vigils wan!

Yet do I shrine thee as each day I wake.

Wishing I had another shirt to pawn.”

I smoked two large cigars over my sonnet before I finally got it straight. This in spite of the fact that I had a hundred and one other things to do. If the house had been burning I believe the firemen would have dragged me out muttering and puzzling over my sonnet. My rhymes bucked on me; and, though I had rounded up a likely bunch of words, I just couldn’t get them into the corral. Finally, with more of perspiration than inspiration, the thing was done.

“Hullo, Madden!” said some one as I wrote the last line, and looking up I saw young Hadsley, a breezy cotillion leader, who had recently been admitted into his father’s law firm.

“Rotten nuisance, this early snow,” went on Hadsley. “Mucks things up so. ’Fraid it’ll spoil the game on Saturday.”

“I hope not,” I replied fervently. The game was the Yale-Princeton football match, and I was terribly eager to see my old college win.

“By the way,” suggested Hadsley, “if you care to go I’ll run you down on my car.”

“Of course, I’d like it,” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “I’ll be simply delighted.” Then like a flash I remembered.

“Oh, no! After all, I’m sorry, I can’t. I expect to be in mid-ocean by Saturday.”

“Ah, indeed! That sounds interesting. Going to Europe! Wish I was. When do you start?”

“To-morrow on the Garguantuan.”

“You don’t say! Why, the Chumley Graces are going on her. Of course, you remember the three girls—awfully jolly, play golf divinely, used to be called the Three Graces? They’re so peeved they’re missing the game, but the old man won’t stay for it. They’re taking their car and going to tour Europe. How nice for you! You’ll have no end of a good time going over.”

Malediction! Could I never out-pace prosperity? Could I never throw off the yoke of fortune?

“Oh, well, it’s not settled yet,” I went on quickly. “I may not be able to make it for to-morrow. I may have to take a later boat. So don’t say anything about it, there’s a good fellow.”

“Oh, all right. The surprise will be all the jollier when they see you. Well, good-bye, old man, and good luck. You’ll get the news of the game by wireless. Gee! I wish I was in your shoes.”

Hadsley was off, leaving me gnawing at an imaginary moustache. “The Chumley Graces going on the Garguantuan. That means I can never go steerage, and I have set my heart on going steerage. Let’s see the paper again. Hurrah! There’s an Italian steamer sailing to-morrow morning. Well, that’ll do.”

I was now in a whirlwind of energy, packing and making final arrangements. At the steamship office, when I asked for a ticket, the clerk beamed on me.

“Yes, sir, we can give you a nice suite on the main deck, the best we have on the boat. Lucky it’s not taken.”

My moral courage almost failed me. “No, no!” I said hastily. “It’s not for me. It’s for one of my servants whose way I’m paying back to Italy. Give me a steerage ticket.”

“Coward! Coward!” hissed Conscience in my ear. “You’re making a bad beginning.”

Just before lunch I remembered my business with Quince, and, jumping into a taxi, whisked down to the Bank. The manager received me effusively. The note was prepared—only wanted a satisfactory endorser. I scratched my name on the back of it, then, speaking into the telephone on the manager’s desk, I got Quince on the line.

“Hullo! This is Madden speaking. I say, Quince, I have fixed up that note for you.”

(A confused murmur that might be construed as thanks.)

“And about that article, never mind. I find I won’t need it.”

(Another confused murmur that might be construed as relief.)

“No, I’ve come to the conclusion you’re right. The book’s not the right stuff. If you praised it you’d probably have a hard time getting square with your conscience. So we’ll let it go at that. Good-bye.”

Then I slammed the receiver on the hook, feeling that I had gained more than I had lost.

By three o’clock everything had been done that could be done. I was on the point of giving a sigh of relief, when all at once I remembered two farewell calls I really ought to make.

“I’d almost forgotten them,” I said. “I must say good-bye to Mrs. Fitz and Miss Tevandale.”

CHAPTER IV
AN UNINTENTIONAL PHILANDERER

To believe a woman who tells you her age is twenty-nine is to show a naïve confidence in her veracity. Twenty-nine is an almost impossible age. No woman is twenty-nine for more than one year, yet by a process of elasticity it is often made to extend over half a dozen. True, the following years are insolent, unworthy of acknowledgment, best punished by being haughtily ignored. For to rest on twenty-nine as long as she dare is every woman’s right.

Mrs. Fitzbarrington had been twenty-nine for four or five years, but if she had said thirty-nine, no one would have expressed particular surprise. However, there were reasons. Captain Fitzbarrington, who was in receipt of a monthly allowance, had been engaged for some years in a book entitled The Beers of America, the experimental investigations for which absorbed the greater part of his income. Mrs. Fitz, then, had a hard time of it, and it was wonderful how she managed to dress so well and keep on smiling.

She received me in the rather faded drawing-room of the house in Harlem. She herself was rather faded, with pale, sentimental eyes, and a complex complexion. How pathetic is the woman of thirty, who, feeling youth with all that it means slipping away from her, makes a last frantic fight to retain it! Mrs. Fitz, on this occasion, was just a little more faded, a little more restored, a little more thirty-ninish than usual; and she welcomed me with a little more than her usual warmth.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, giving me both hands. “You know, I was just thinking of you.”

This clearly called for a gallant reply, so I answered, “Ah! that must be telepathy, for you know I’m always thinking of you.”

Yet I could have bitten my tongue as soon as I heard the last phrase slip from my mouth. There was a sudden catch in her breath; a soft light beaconed in her eyes. Confound the thing! why do the women we don’t want to always take us seriously, and those we are serious with always persist in regarding us as a joke? I hastened to change the subject.

“Ah, how are the kiddies?”

The kiddies were Ronnie and Lonnie, two twin boys, very sticky and strenuous, whom in my heart I detested.

“The darlings! They’re always so well. Heaven knows what I should do without them.”

“And he?”

“Oh, he! I haven’t seen him for three days, not since the remittance arrived, and then you can guess the state he was in.”

“My poor friend! I’m so sorry.” (How I hated my voice for vibrating as I said this, but for the life of me I could not help it. At such a moment tricks I had learnt in my short stage career came to me almost unconsciously.)

“Oh, don’t pity me,” she said; “you know a woman hates any one who pities her.”

“Then I mustn’t make you hate me.” (Again that infernal fighting-with-repressed feeling note.) “Well, you know you have my deepest sympathy,” I added hastily.

She certainly had. My Irish heart melts at a tale of woe, or is roused to fiery wrath at the recital of a wrong. I feel far more keenly than the person concerned. Yet, alas! the moment after I am ready to laugh heartily with the next one.

“Yes, indeed, I know it,” she spoke quickly. “It almost makes it worth while to suffer for that. You know how much it means to me, how much it helps, don’t you?”

There was an awkward pause. She was waiting for me to take my cue, and I was staring at a mental sign-board, “Dangerous Ground.” I tried to say, “Well, I’m glad,” in a friendly way, but, to my infinite disgust, my voice broke. She caught the note, as of suppressed emotion. With wide eyes she looked at me as if she would read my soul: her flat bosom heaved, then suddenly she leaned forward and her voice was tense.

“Horace,” she breathed, “do you love me?”

Now, when a female asks an unprotected male if he loves her there can be only two answers: Yes or No. If No, a scene follows in which he feels like a brute. If Yes, he saves her feelings and gives Time a chance to straighten things out. The situation is embarrassing and calls for delicate handling. I am sadly lacking in moral courage, and kindness of heart has always been my weakness. To say “No” would be to deal a deathblow to this woman’s hope, to leave her crushed and broken, to drive her to despair, perhaps even to suicide. Besides—it would be awfully impolite.

“Perhaps I’d better humour her,” I thought. So I too leaned forward, and in the same husky voice I answered, “Stella, how can you ask?”

“Cora,” she corrected gently. I was rather taken aback. Yet I am not the first man who has called the lady of the moment by the name of her predecessor. It is one of life’s embarrassing situations. However, I went on:

“Cora, how could you guess?”

“How does a woman know these things?” she answered passionately. “Could I not read it in your eyes alone?”

“Ah! my eyes—yes, my eyes....” Inwardly I added, “Damn my eyes!” Then, after a pause in which I was conscious of her wide, bright, expectant regard I repeated lamely, “Ye—es, my eyes.”

But she was evidently waiting for me to rise to the occasion. She leaned still further forward; then suddenly she laid her hands on mine.

“You mustn’t kiss me,” she said.

“Oh, no, I mustn’t,” I agreed hastily. I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing it.

“No, no, that would ruin us. We must control ourselves. If Charley were to discover our secret he would kill me. Oh, I’ve known for long, so long that you loved me; but you were too fine, too honourable to show it. Now, what are we going to do? The situation is full of danger.”

“Do!” I said glumly, “I don’t know. It’s beastly awkward.” Then with an effort I cheered up. I tried to look at her with sad, stern eyes. I let my voice go down an octave.

“There’s only one thing to do, Nora—I mean, Cora, only one thing: I—must—go—away.”

“No, no, not that,” she cried.

“Yes, yes, I must; I must put the world between us. We must never meet again.”

I could feel fresh courage in my heart, also the steerage ticket in my pocket. In a near-by mirror I had a glimpse of my face, and was pleased to see how it was stern and set. I was pleased to see also that she was looking at me as if I were a hero.

“Brave! Noble!” she whispered. “I knew it. Oh, I understand so well! It’s for me you’re doing this. How proud I am of you!”

Then, with my returning sense of safety, the dramatic instinct began to seethe in me. Apparently I had got out of the difficulty easily enough. Now to end things gracefully.

“Oh, what an irony life is!” I breathed. “How happy we could have been, just we two in some garden of roses. Oh, if we were only free, free to fly to the ends of the earth together, to the heart of the desert, to the shadow of the pole—only together! Why did we meet like this, too late, too late?”

“Is it too late?” she panted, catching fire at my words. “Why should we let life cheat us of our joy? Take me away, darling, to some far, far land where no one will know us, where we can live, love, dream. What does it matter? There will be a ten days’ scandal; he will get a divorce; all will soon be forgotten. Oh, take me away, sweetheart; take me away!”

By this time I was quite under the spell of my histrionic imagination. Here was a dramatic situation, and, though the heavens fall, I must work it out artistically. I threw caution to the winds and my arms around the lady.

“Yes,” I cried. “Come with me. Come now, let us fly together. I want you; I need you; I cannot live without you. Make me the happiest man in the world. Let me live for you, just to adore you, to make your life one long, sweet dream of bliss.”

These were phrases from one of my novels, and they slipped out almost unconsciously. Again in that convenient mirror I saw myself with parted lips and eyes agleam. “How well I’m doing this!” the artist in me applauded. “Ass! Ass!” hissed the critical overself. My attitude was a picture of passionate supplication, yet my whole heart was a prayer to the guardian that watches over fools.

“Oh, don’t tempt me,” she cried; “it’s terrible. Yes, yes, I’ll go now. Let’s lose no time in case I weaken ... at once.... I’ll just get my hat and cloak. Wait a moment—”

She was gone. Horror of horrors! What had I done? Here I was eloping with a woman for whom I did not care two pins. What mad folly had got into me? As I stared blankly at the door through which she had passed it seemed to be suddenly invested with all the properties of tragedy. Soon she would emerge from it clad for the flight, and—I must accompany her. Could I not escape? The window? But no, it was six stories high. By heaven, I must go through with it! Let my life be ruined, I must play the game. As I sat there, waiting for her to reappear, never in the history of eloping humanity was there man more miserable.

Then at last she came— Oh, merciful gods, without her hat!

“How can I tell you,” she moaned. “My courage failed me. I couldn’t bear to leave my children. There were their little photographs staring at me so reproachfully from the dressing-table. For their sakes I must stay and bear with him. After all, he is their father.”

“Is he? I mean, of course he is.” How my brain was reeling with joy! At that moment I loved the terrible twins with a great and lasting love.

“Forgive you, Flora,” I said nobly. “There is nothing to forgive. I can only love you the more. You are right. Never must they think of their mother with the blush of shame. No, for their dear sakes we must each do our duty, though our hearts may break. I will go away, never to return. Yet, my dearest, I will always think of you as the noblest woman in the world.”

“And I you too, dearest. You shall be my hero, and I shall adore you to the last day of my life. Now go, go quickly lest I weaken; and don’t” (here she leaned closely to me), “don’t kiss me—not even once....”

“No, I won’t. It’s hard, hard—but I won’t. And listen, darling—if ever anything should happen to him, if at any time we should both find ourselves free, promise, promise me you’ll write to me. I’ll come to you though the whole world lies between us. By my life, by my honour I swear it.”

“I promise,” she said fervently. She looked as if she was going to weaken again, and I thought I had better get away quickly. A phrase from one of my novels came into my mind: “Here the brave voice broke.”

“Good-bye,” I cried. “Good-bye for ever. I shall never blame you, darling. Perhaps in another land I’ll find my happiness again. Then some day, when we both are bent and grey, and sentiment lies buried under the frosts of time, we’ll meet again, and, clasping hands, confess that all was for the best. And now, God bless you, Dora ... for the last, last time, good-bye.”

Here “the brave voice broke” beautifully; then slowly and with drooping head I made my exit from the room. Once in the street I drew a deep breath.

“To be over-sympathetic is to be misunderstood,” I sighed. “Well, I’ve given her a precious memory. Poor Mrs. Fitz!”

And, come to think of it, I had never kissed her, not even once.

Fifteen minutes later I had reached Riverside Drive, and was being shown into the luxurious apartment of Miss Boadicia Tevandale.

She was an orphan and an heiress, only child of Tevandale the big corporation lawyer, himself an author, whose Tevandale on Torts had almost as big a circulation as my Haunted Taxicab. Socially she moved in a more exalted sphere than I, but we had met at some of the less exclusive functions, and she had majestically annexed me.

Though her dearest enemy could not have called her “fat,” there was just a suggestion of a suggestion that at some time in the future she might possibly develop what might be described as an adipose approximation. At present she was merely “big.”

I rather resent bigness in a woman. A female’s first duty is to be feminine—to be small, dainty, helpless. I genuinely dislike holding a hand if it is larger than my own, and I can understand the feelings of Wainwright who poisoned his sister-in-law because her thick ankles annoyed him. However, Boadicia had really been very nice to me. It would have been terribly rude on my part to have ignored her overtures of friendship. Consequently we had been seen much together, and had drifted into what the world regarded as a sentimental attachment. With my faculty, then, for entering into such situations, I was sometimes convinced that my feelings for her were those of real warmth. Indeed, once or twice, in moments of great enthusiasm, I almost suspected myself of being mildly in love with her.

She received me radiantly, and she, too, gave me both hands. On the third finger of the left one I noted the sparkle of a new diamond.

“Hello, stranger,” she said, gaily. “Just in time for tea. It seems ages since I’ve seen you. Why haven’t you been near me for a whole fortnight?”

I was going to make the usual excuses, when suddenly that devil of sentiment entered into me. So, trying to give my face a pinched look, I answered in a hollow voice:

“Can you ask that?”

She looked at me in surprise. “Why, Horace, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, you women, you women!” I groaned bitterly.

“What do you mean?” she demanded, with some amazement.

“What do I mean? Are you blind? Have you no eyes as well as no heart? Can you not see how I have loved you this long, long while; loved you with a passion no tongue can tell? And now—”

I pointed dramatically to the new ring.

“Oh, that! Why, you don’t mean to say—”

“I mean to say that after I read of your engagement in this morning’s Town Tattle I went straight off and took a passage for Europe. I leave to-morrow. I’ve just come to say good-bye.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, so sorry you feel that way about it. I never dreamed—”

“No, I have uttered no word, given no sign. How could I, knowing the difference in our social positions? Break, break my heart, but I must hold my tongue. So it seems I have kept my secret better even than I knew. But it does not matter now. I have no word of reproach. To-morrow I go, never to return. I pray you may be happy, very happy. And so, good-bye....”

“Wait a moment! Good gracious!”

She laid a detaining hand on my arm, but I shook it off quite roughly, and strode to the window. My face was stern and set; my shoulders heaved with emotion. I had seen the leading man in our Cruel Chicago Company (in which I doubled the parts of the waiter and the policeman) use the same gesture with great effect.

“Why did I ever meet you?” I said harshly to a passing taxicab.

And strange as it may seem, at that moment I had really worked myself into the spirit of the scene. I actually felt a blighted being, the victim of a woman’s wiles. Then she was there at my side, pale, agitated.

“I’m so grieved. Why didn’t you speak? If I’d only known you cared. But then, you know, nobody takes you seriously. Perhaps, though, it’s not too late. If you really, really care so much I’ll try to break off my engagement with Bunny.”

(Bunny was Mr. Jarraway Tope, an elderly Pittsburg manufacturer of suspenders—Tope’s “Never-tear Ever-wear Suspenders.”)

“No, no, it’s too late now,” I interrupted eagerly. “Things could never be the same. Besides, he loves you. He’s a good old fellow. He will make you happy, far happier than I could. He is rich; I am poor. It is better so.”

“Riches are not everything,” she pouted miserably.

“No, but they’re the best imitation of it I know. Oh, you hothouse flowers! You creatures of lace and luxury! You don’t know what it is to be poor, to live from hand to mouth. How could you be happy in a cottage—I mean a Brooklyn flat? No, no, Boadicia, we must not let sentiment blind us. Never will I drag you down.”

“But there’s no question of poverty. You make lots of money?”

“A mere pittance,” I cried bitterly. “It’s my publishers who make the money. I’m no man of business. On a few beggarly royalties how can I hold up my end? No, I must put the world between us. Oh, it will be all right. Some day when we are both old and grey, and sentiment lies buried under the frost of time, we will perhaps meet again, and, clasping hands, confess that all was for the best.”

“Oh, I hate to let you go away like that. If you have no money, I have.”

“As if I could ever touch a penny of yours,” I interrupted her sternly.

“Horace,” she pleaded, “you cut me to the heart. Don’t go.”

“Yes, yes. Believe me it’s best. Why prolong this painful scene? I’ll pray for your happiness, for both of your happinesses, yours and Bunny’s. Perhaps my heart’s not so badly broken after all.” (I smiled a brave, twisted smile.) “For the last time, good-bye, good-bye.”

With that I rushed blindly from the room. When I reached the street, I wiped away a few beads of perspiration.

“Oh, you everlasting, sentimental humbug!” I cried. “One of these days you’ll get nicely nailed to the cross of your folly.”

CHAPTER V
A SEASICK SENTIMENTALIST

If ever I should come to write my autobiography (as I fondly hope in the fulness of time my recognition as the American Dumas will justify me in doing) it will fall easily into chapters. For, so far, my life has consisted of distinct periods, each inspired by a dramatic conception of myself. Let me then try to forecast its probable divisions.

Chapter I.—Boyhood. Violently imaginative period.—Devouring ambition to become pirate chief.—Organised the “Band of Blood.”—Antipathy to study.—Favourite literature: Jack Harkaway.

Chapter II.—Youth. Violently athletic period.—Devouring ambition to become great first baseman.—Organised the Angoras. Continued antipathy to study.—Favourite literature: The sporting rags.

Chapter III.—Cubhood. Violently red blood period.—Devouring ambition to become champion broncho buster.—Went to Wyoming, and became the most cowboyish cowboy in seven counties.—Favourite literature: The yellow rags.

Chapter IV.—Undergraduate days. Violently intellectual period.—Devouring ambition to become literary mandarin.—Gave up games and became a bookworm.—Commenced to write, but disdained anything less than an epic.—Favourite literature: The French decadents.

Chapter V.—Adolescence. Violently histrionic period.—Devouring ambition to become a second Mansfield.—Joined the Cruel Chicago Company as general utility.—Chief literature: The theatrical rags.

Chapter VI.—Manhood. At age of twenty-one wrote The Haunted Taxicab, and scored immediate success.—Devouring ambition to write the Great American Novel.—Published nine more books in next five years, and managed to hold my own.

There you are—down to the time of which the present record tells. And now, in accordance with the plot, let me continue.

On a certain muggy morning of late November, a young man of conspicuously furtive bearing might have been seen climbing aboard the steamer bound for Naples. He wore the brim of his velour hat turned down, with the air of one who entirely wishes to avoid observation.

Over one arm hung a mackintosh, and at the end of the other dangled an alligator-skin suitcase. An inventory of its contents would have resulted as follows: A silk-lined, blue serge suit; three silk négligé shirts; three suits silk pyjamas; three suits silk underwear; three pairs silk socks; several silk ties, and sundry toilet articles.

If, in the above list, an insistence on the princely fabric is to be remarked, I must confess that I shrink from the contact of baser material. It was then with some dismay that I descended into the bowels of the ship, and was piloted to my berth by a squinting steward in shirt-sleeves. I gazed with distaste at the threadbare cotton blanket that was to replace the cambric sheets of the mighty. Then I looked at the oblique-eyed one, and observed that nonchalantly over his arm was hung another blanket of more sympathetic texture, and that his palm protruded in a mercenary curve. So into that venial hollow I dropped half a dollar, and took the extra blanket. Then throwing my suitcase on the berth, I went on deck.

Shades of Cæsar! Garibaldi! Carusa! What had I “gone up against”? One and all my fellow passengers seemed to be of the race of garlic eaters. Not a stodgy Saxon face among them. Verily I was marooned in a sea of dagos. Here we were, caged like cattle; above us, a tier of curious faces, the superior second class; still higher, looking down with disdain, the fastidious firsts. And here, herded with these degenerate Latins, under these derisive eyes, must I remain many days. What a wretched prospect! What rotten luck! And all the fault of these gad-about Chumley Graces, confound them!

But I did not lament for long. If ever there is an opening for the sentimentalist it is on leaving for the first time his native land. Could it be expected, then, that I, a professional purveyor of sentiment, would be silent? Nay! as I watched the Statue of Liberty diminish to an interrogation mark, I delivered myself somewhat as follows:

“Grey sea, grey sky, and grey, so grey

The ragged roof-line of my home;

Yet greyer far my mood than they,

As here amid this spawn of Rome

With tenderness undreamt before

I sigh: ‘Adieu, my native shore!’

“To thee my wistful eyes I strain;

To thee, brave burg, I wave my hand;

Good-bye, oh giddy Tungsten Lane!

Good-bye, oh great Skyscraper Land!

Good-bye, Fifth Avenue so splendid...!!”