CHAPTER LXXVII

Whether due to a naturally weak and incompetent physique or a mind which unduly tortures itself with the evidences of a none-too-smooth working of the creative impulse and its machinery, or whether I had merely had my fill of reportorial work as such and could endure no more, or whatever else might have been the cause, I finally determined to get out of the newspaper profession entirely, come what might and cost what it might, although just what I was to do once I was out I could not guess. I had no trade or profession other than this, and the thought of editing or writing for anything save a newspaper was as far from me as engineering or painting. I did not think I could write anything beyond newspaper news items, and with this conclusion many will no doubt be glad to agree with me even unto this day.

Yet out of this messy and heartless world in which I was now working I did occasionally extract a tale that was printable, only so low was my credit that I rarely won the privilege of writing it myself. Had I imagined that I could write I might easily have built up stories out of what I saw which would have shocked the souls of the magazine editors and writers, but they would never have been published. They would have been too low, gruesome, drab, horrible, and so beyond the view of any current magazine or its clientele.

Life at that time, outside the dark picture of it presented by the daily papers, must, as I have shown, be all sweetness and gayety and humor. We must discuss only our better selves, and arrive at a happy ending; or if perchance this realer world must be referred to it must be indicated in some cloudy manner which would give it more the charm of shadow than of fact, something used to enhance the values of the lighter and more perfect and beautiful things with which our lives must concern themselves. Marriage, if I read the current magazines correctly, was a sweet and delicate affair, never marred by the slightest erratic conduct of any kind. Love was made in heaven and lasted forever. Ministers, doctors, lawyers and merchants, were all good men, rarely if ever guilty of the shams and subterfuges and trashy aspects of humanity. If a man did an evil thing it was due to his lower nature, which really had nothing to do with his higher—and it was a great concession for the intelligentsia of that day (maybe of this) to admit that he had two natures, one of which was not high. Most of us had only the higher one, our better nature.... When I think of the literary and social snobbery and bosh of that day, its utter futility and profound faith in its own goodness, as opposed to facts of its own visible life, I have to smile.

But it never occurred to me that I could write, in the literary sense, and as for editing, I never even thought of it. And yet that was the very next thing I did. I wandered about thinking what I was to do, deciding each day that if I had the courage of a rat I would no longer endure this time-consuming game of reporting, for the pitiful sum which I was allowed to draw. What more could it do for me? I asked myself over and over. Make me more aware of the brutality, subtlety, force, charm, selfishness of life? It could not if I worked a hundred years. Essentially, as I even then saw, it was a boy’s game, and I was slowly but surely passing out of the boy stage. Yet in desperation because I saw disappearing the amount which I had saved up in Pittsburgh, and I had not one other thing in sight, I visited other newspaper offices to see if I could not secure, temporarily at least, a better regular salary. But no. Whenever I could get in to see a city or managing editor, which was rare, no one seemed to want me. At the offices of the Herald, Times, Tribune, Sun, and elsewhere the same outer office system worked to keep me out, and I was by now too indifferent to the reportorial work and too discouraged really to wish to force myself in or to continue as a reporter at all. Indeed I went about this matter of inquiry more or less perfunctorily, not really believing in either myself or my work. If I had secured a well-paying position I presume that I should have continued. Fortunately or unfortunately, as one chooses to look at such things, I did not; but it seemed far from fortunate then to me.

Finally one Saturday afternoon, having brought in a story which related to a missing girl whose body was found at the morgue and being told to “give the facts to —— and let him write it,” I summoned up sufficient courage to say to the assistant who ordered me to do this:

“I don’t see why I should always have to do this. I’m not a beginner in this game. I wrote stories, and big ones, before ever I came to this paper.”

“Maybe you did,” he replied rather sardonically, “but we have the feeling that you haven’t proved to be of much use to us.”

After this there was nothing to say and but one thing to do. I could not say that I had had no opportunities; but just the same I was terribly hurt in my pride. Without knowing what to do or where to go, I there and then decided that, come what might, this was the end of newspaper reporting for me. Never again, if I died in the fight, would I condescend to be a reporter on any paper. I might starve, but if so—I would starve. Either I was going to get something different, something more profitable to my mind, or I was going to starve or get out of New York.

I went to the assistant and turned over my data, then got my hat and went out. I felt that I should be dismissed eventually anyhow for incompetence and insubordination, so dark was my mood in regard to all of it, and so out I went. One thing I did do; I visited the man who had first ordered the city editor to put me on and submitted to him various clippings of work done in Pittsburgh with the request that he advise me as to where I might turn for work.

“Better try the Sun,” was his sane advice. “It’s a great school, and you might do well over there.”

But although I tried I could not get on the Sun—not, at least, before I had managed to do something else.

Thus ended my newspaper experiences, which I never resumed save as a writer of Sunday specials, and then under entirely different conditions—but that was ten years later. In the meantime I was now perforce turning toward a world which had never seemed to contain any future for me, and I was doing it without really knowing it. But that is another story. It might be related under some such title as Literary Experiences.

N.B. Four years later, having by then established myself sufficiently to pay the rent of an apartment, secure furniture and convince myself that I could make a living for two, I undertook that perilous adventure with the lady of my choice—and that, of course, after the first flare of love had thinned down to the pale flame of duty. Need anything more be said? The first law of convention had been obeyed, whereas the governing forces of temperament had been overridden—and with what results eventually you may well suspect. So much for romance.

 

 

Transcriber’s Note: Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. Typographical errors were silently corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.

 

 

 

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