ed.

"My plan won't stop your making money," he replied. "I want you to write
less, but get more pay."

"That sounds attractive. How shall I do it?"

"By writing about big men," he said. "I suggest that you try a series of
portraits of some of the big Americans and the America they know."

I jumped up so suddenly he started.

"What's the matter?" he asked with a glance at the door. "Did you hear
anything?"

"Yes," I said excitedly. "I heard a stunning title! The America They
Know!"

We discussed it all that morning and it appealed to me more and more.
Later on, with Eleanore's help (for she grew stronger fast those days),
I prevailed upon her father to let me practice upon himself as my first
subject. I worked fast, my material right at hand, and within a few
weeks I had written the story of those significant incidents out of
thirty years of work and wanderings east and west that showed the
America he had known, his widening view. I did his portrait, so to
speak, with his back to the reader, letting the reader see what he saw.
This story I sold promptly, and under the tonic of that success I went
into the work with zest and vim.

It filled the next four years of my life. It took the view I had had of
the harbor and widened it to embrace the whole land, which I now saw
altogether through the eyes of the men at the top.

The most central figure of them all, and by far the most difficult to
attack, was a powerful New York banker, one of those invisible gods
whose hand I had felt on the harbor.

"The value of him to you," Dillon said, "is that if you can only make
him talk you'll find him a born storyteller. The secret scandal of his
life is that once in a short vacation he tried to write a play."

It was weeks before he would see me, and I had my first interview at
last only by getting on a night train which he had taken for Cleveland.
There in his stateroom, cornered, he received me with a grim reluctance.
And with a humorous glint in his eyes,

"How much do you know about banking?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said frankly. And then I took a sudden chance. "What do you
know about writing?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said placidly.

"Is that true? I thought you once wrote a play." He sat up very quickly.
"If you did," I went on, "you've probably read some of Shakespeare's
stuff. It was strong stuff about strong men. If he were alive he'd write
about you, but I'm sure that he wouldn't know about banking. That's