Sister Carrie" with a smirk of
satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.

Sec. 4

It is, indeed, a truly amazing first book, and one marvels to hear that
it was begun lightly. Dreiser in those days (_circa_ 1899), had seven or
eight years of newspaper work behind him, in Chicago, St. Louis, Toledo,
Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and New York, and was beginning to feel
that reaction of disgust which attacks all newspaper men when the
enthusiasm of youth wears out. He had been successful, but he saw how
hollow that success was, and how little surety it held out for the
future. The theatre was what chiefly lured him; he had written plays in
his nonage, and he now proposed to do them on a large scale, and so get
some of the easy dollars of Broadway. It was an old friend from Toledo,
Arthur Henry, who turned him toward story-writing. The two had met while
Henry was city editor of the _Blade_, and Dreiser a reporter looking for
a job.[21] A firm friendship sprang up, and Henry conceived a high
opinion of Dreiser's ability, and urged him to try a short story.
Dreiser was distrustful of his own skill, but Henry kept at him, and
finally, during a holiday the two spent together at Maumee, Ohio, he
made the attempt. Henry had the manuscript typewritten and sent it to
_Ainslee's Magazine_. A week or so later there came a cheque for $75.

This was in 1898. Dreiser wrote four more stories during the year
following, and sold them all. Henry now urged him to attempt a novel,
but again his distrust of himself held him back. Henry finally tried a
rather unusual argument: he had a novel of his own on the stocks,[22]
and he represented that he was in difficulties with it and in need of
company. One day, in September, 1899, Dreiser took a sheet of yellow
paper and wrote a title at random. That title was "Sister Carrie," and
with no more definite plan than the mere name offered the book began. It
went ahead steadily enough until the middle of October, and had come by
then to the place where Carrie meets Hurstwood. At that point Dreiser
left it in disgust. It seemed pitifully dull and inconsequential, and
for two months he put the manuscript away. Then, under renewed urgings
by Henry, he resumed the writing, and kept on to the place where
Hurstwood steals the money. Here he went aground upon a comparatively
simple problem; he couldn't devise a way to manage the robbery. Late in
January he gave it up. But the faithful Henry kept urgi