that
responsibility. I'd want to be sure that I knew all about it. You want
to remember, Witla, that running one department under the direction and
with the sympathetic assistance and consideration of someone over you is
very different from running four or five departments on your own
responsibility and with no one over you except someone who wants
intelligent guidance from you. Colfax, as I understand him, isn't a
publisher, either by tendency or training or education. He's a
financier. He'll want you, if you take that position, to tell him how it
shall be done. Now, unless you know a great deal about the publishing
business, you have a difficult task in that. I don't want to appear to
be throwing cold water on your natural ambition to get up in the world.
You're entitled to go higher if you can. No one in your circle of
acquaintances would wish you more luck than I will if you decide to go.
I want you to think carefully of what you are doing. Where you are here
you are perfectly safe, or as nearly safe as any man is who behaves
himself and maintains his natural force and energy can be. It's only
natural that you should expect more money in the face of this offer, and
I shall be perfectly willing to give it to you. I intended, as you
possibly expected, to do somewhat better for you by January. I'll say
now that if you want to stay here you can have fourteen thousand now and
possibly sixteen thousand in a year or a year and a half from now. I
don't want to overload this department with what I consider an undue
salary. I think sixteen thousand dollars, when it is paid, will be high
for the work that is done here, but you're a good man and I'm perfectly
willing to pay it to you.

"The thing for you to do is to make up your mind whether this
proposition which I now make you is safer and more in accord
with your desires than the one Mr. Colfax makes you. With him
your eighteen thousand begins at once. With me sixteen thousand is a
year away, anyhow. With him you have promise of an outlook which is much
more glittering than any you can reasonably hope for here, but you want
to remember that the difficulties will be, of course, proportionately
greater. You know something about me by now. You still--and don't think
I want to do him any injustice; I don't--have to learn about Mr. Colfax.
Now, I'd advise you to think carefully before you act. Study the
situation over there before you accept it. The United Magazines
Corporation