rial, almost
if not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and months
thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he
seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a
method of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and I was very
much pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary.

It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do
and the conditions under which we were trying to do them--the raw
commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the
necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as
I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new
building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion
of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our
publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul,
all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push,"
ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to
the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were,
demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little
group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real.

It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be
done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be
struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and
describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here
was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so
avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this
magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having
him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a
given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune,
event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he
was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order
in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from
me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and
thereafter gave me no real difficulty.

But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my
theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to
me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these
conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to le