Part 7 (2/2)

That last speech told me how thoroughly the woman of twenty-three was a development of the child of fourteen, for I remembered how little my mother's anger used to disturb you, but how deeply and strongly your emotions affected you. I suppose it was absurd, but I felt happy to think that you had changed so little in character from the time when I knew you so well. And from that evening I never for an instant believed that you would marry Mr. Whitely, for I was sure that you could never love him. How could I dream that you, with beauty, social position, and wealth, would make a loveless marriage?

Good-night, my love.

XI

_March 2._ The truth of the difference of quality between the business man and the scholar was quickly brought home to me. On the last evening of my visit, Mr. Blodgett revealed the reason for his latest kindness.

”I got you here,” he explained, ”to look you over and see what you were fit for, thinking I might work you in somewhere. No,” he continued, as he saw the questioning hopefulness on my face, ”you wouldn't do in business. You've got a sight too much conscience and sympathy, and a sight too little drive. All business is getting the best of somebody else, and you're the kind of chap who'd let a fellow up just because you'd got him down.” Seeing the sadness in my face, for I knew too well he had fathomed me, he added kindly, ”Don't get chicken-hearted over what I say. It's easy enough to outwit a man; the hard thing is not to do it. I'd go out of the trade to-morrow, if it weren't for the boss and Agnes, for I get tired of the meanness of the whole thing. But they want to cut a figure, and that isn't to be done in this town for nothing.

I'll find something for you yet that sha'n't make you sell your heart and your soul as well as your time.”

I was too full of my love and my purpose, however, for this to discourage me. The moment my determination to remain in New York was taken, I wrote to Jastrow, Humzel, and others of my German friends, telling them that for business reasons I had decided to be known as Rudolph Hartzmann, and asking if they would stretch friends.h.i.+p so far as to give me letters in that name to such American publishers and editors as they knew. Excepting Jastrow, they all responded with introductions so flattering that I was almost ashamed to present them, and he wrote me that he had not offered my books for sale, and begged me to reconsider my refusal of the professors.h.i.+p. He even offered, if I would accept the appointment, to divide with me his tuition fees, and suggested that his own advancing years were a pledge that his position would erelong be vacant for me to step into. It almost broke my heart to have to write him that I could not accept his generous offer. In July I received a second letter from him, most touching in its attempt to keep back the grief he felt, but yielding to my determination. He sent me many good introductions, and submitted a bid for my library from a bookseller; but knowing the books to be worth at least double the offer, I held the sale in abeyance.

My first six months in New York disheartened me greatly, though now I know that I succeeded far better than I could have expected to do, in the dullness of the summer. My work was the proof-reading of my book of travel in its varying polyglots, seeing through the press English versions of my two text-books, and writing a third in both English and German. Furthermore, my letters of introduction had made me known to a number of the professors of Columbia College, and by their influence I received an appointment to deliver a course of lectures on race movements the following winter; so I prepared my notes in this leisure time. But this work was far too little to fill my time, and I wrote all kinds of editorials, essays, and reviews, fairly wearing out the editors of the various magazines and newspapers with my frequent calls and articles. Finally I attempted to sell my books to several libraries; but though the tomes and the price both tempted several, none had the money to spend on such a collection.

My book of travel was published in September, was praised by the reviews, and at once sprang into a good sale for a work of that cla.s.s; for Europe is interested in whatever bears on her cancer growth, commonly called the Eastern question. Since Europeans approved the book, Americans at once bought and discussed it; to prove, I suppose, that as a nation we are no longer tainted with provincialism,--as if that very subservience to transatlantic opinion were not the best proof that the virus still works within us. It was issued anonymously, through the fear that if I put my pseudonym on the t.i.tle-page it might lead to inquiry about the author which would reveal his ident.i.ty with Donald Maitland, for whom I only wished oblivion. As a result the question of authors.h.i.+p was much mooted, some declaring a well-known Oxford professor to be the man, others ascribing the volume to a famous German traveler, and Humzel being named by some; but most of the reviews suggested that it was the work of an Eastern savant, and I presume that my style was tinged with orientalism.

You cannot tell what a delight it was to me to learn, at our first meeting in the autumn, that you had read my book. I went in November to the Lenox Library to verify a date, and found you there. I could not help interrupting your reading for a moment,--I had so longed for a glimpse and a word,--and you took my intrusion in good part. I drew a book and pretended to read, merely to veil my covert watching of you; and when you rose to go, I asked permission to walk with you.

”Your notebook suggests that you are a writer by profession, Dr.

Hartzmann?” you surmised.

”Yes.”

”And you have to come to America for material?”

”I have come to America permanently.”

”How unusual!”

”In what respect?”

”For a European writer to come to New York to do more than lecture about himself, have his vanity and purse fed, and return home to write a book about us that we alone read.”

I laughed and said, ”You make me very glad that I am the exception to the rule.”

”I presume more would make the venture if they found the atmosphere less uncongenial. New York as a whole is so absorbed in the task of trans-s.h.i.+pping the products of the busiest nations of two continents that everything is ranked as secondary that does not subserve that end: and the Muses starve.”

”I suppose New York is not the best of places in which to live by art or letters, if compared with London or Paris; yet if a man can do what the world wants done, he can earn a livelihood here.”

”But he cannot gain the great prizes that alone are worth the winning, I fear. I have noticed that American writers only reach American audiences, while European authors not merely win attention at home, but have vogue and sale here. The London or Paris label is quite as effective in New York or Chicago in selling books as in selling clothes.”

”I suppose cultivated Europe is as heedless of the newer peoples as the peoples of the Orient are of those of the Occident. Yet I think that if as good work were turned out in this country as in the Old World, the place of its production would not seriously militate against its success.”

”And have you found it so?”

”Nothing I have yet written in this country merits Continental attention.”

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