the man
whose life I was writing that month, a man of astounding fertility, who
had started fifteen years ago with a small hotel in a western town, had
made money, had built a larger hotel, had made money, had moved to a
larger town and bought a still larger hotel, had made money, had moved
to Chicago, New York, had made money. And the America he knew was made
up of people who themselves had made their money so suddenly they had to
come to hotels to spend it. The stories that he told me, both scandalous
and otherwise, of these men and women who shot up rich and diamondy out
of this booming country of ours, had a range and a richness of color
that had held me delighted through many long talks. During luncheon he
had told some of his best, and had given me permission to print, with a
discreet twist or so to disguise them, certain intimate episodes in the
first fat years of men whose names were by-words now all over the land.
I could already see that story selling on the newsstands.

From this man I had come uptown to a branch of the Y. M. C. A., where
after an hour of hand-ball and a plunge in the swimming tank I had gone
to a room downstairs, to which ambitious youngsters came for free advice
from an expert who told them how to get on in life. His room was a
confessional. He would cross-examine each suppliant hard, make a
diagnosis of each one and then give him advice as to what to do--whether
or not to throw over his job, what kind of work he was suited for best.
The America he knew was made up of these small human units, some
pitiably or absurdly small, but all anxiously straining upward. And they
too appealed to me.

For I was so successful now that I was growing mellow. From certain big
men I had written about I had taken a spacious breadth of view that
included a deep indulgence for all these skurrying pigmies. Poor little
devils, give 'em a chance, especially those among them who had "bim"
enough to want a chance, to wonder why they were not getting on and want
to do something about it. And so I had formed the habit of dropping in
often at this room, hearing its confessions and now and then helping get
someone a job. As the swimming tank made my body tingle, so this place
affected my soul. It warmed me to do all I could for some fellow, some
decent kid who was down on his luck. Besides, some confessions were gems
of their kind, glimpses into human lives, hard struggles, wild
ambitions. I meant to write them up som