man of forty could bring to
bear. It was a new and pleasant schooling for me, a time which I look
back upon with wistful satisfaction, after more than twenty years.

Philadelphia, our next stop, had an especial significance to me
(something quite apart from its historical significance). Outwardly
professing a keen interest in the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and
other objects which enthralled my young wife, I was secretly planning to
offer Lorimer of _The Post_, the serial rights of my novel _The Eagle's
Heart_, and I had an engagement to talk with Edward Bok about a
novelette.

Bok, a friend of several years' standing, received us most cordially,
and Mrs. Bok, who came in next day to meet us, not only instantly and
heartily approved of my wife, but quite openly said so, a fact which
added another quality to the triumphal character of our progress. I was
certain that all of my other Eastern friends would find her admirable.

We reached New York on New Year's Eve, and the streets were roaring with
the customary riot of youth, but in our rooms at the Westminster we were
as remote from the tumult as if we had been at the bottom of a Colorado
mine. We would have heard nothing of the horns and hootings of the
throngs had not Zulime expressed a wish to go forth and mix with them.
With a feeling of disgust of the hoodlums who filled Broadway, I took
her as far north as Forty-second Street, but she soon tired of the rude
men and their senseless clamor, and gladly returned to our hotel willing
to forget it all.

In my diary I find these words, "I am beginning the New Year with two
thousand dollars in the bank, and a pending sale which will bring in as
much more. I feel pretty confident of a living during the year 1900."

Evidently the disposal of my serial to Lorimer, the results of my deal
with Brett, and the growing interest of other publishers in my work had
engendered a confidence in the future which I had never before
attained--and yet I must admit that most of my prosperity was expected
rather than secured, a promise, rather than a fulfillment, and the fact
that I permitted Zulime to settle upon a three-room suite in an obscure
Hotel on Fifteenth Street, is proof of my secret doubts. Eighteen
dollars per week seemed a good deal of money to pay for an apartment.

As I think back to this transaction I am bitten by a kind of remorseful
shame. It was such a shabby little lodging for my artist bride, and yet,
at the