Part 8 (2/2)

”That accounts for the agreement in thought. You admire the book?”

”I think it is a conscientious attempt to describe what the author saw.”

”Ah, it is much more than that!” you exclaimed. ”At a dinner in London, this autumn, I sat next the Earl---- next a member of the Indian Council, and he told me he considered it a far more brilliant book than Kinglake's Eothen.”

I knew I had no right to continue this subject, but I could not help asking, ”You liked it?”

”Very much. It seems to me a deep and philosophic study of present and future problems, besides being a vivid picture of most interesting countries and peoples. It made me long to be a nomad myself, and wander as the author did. The thought of three years of such life, of such freedom, seems to stir in me all the inherited tendency to prowl that we women supposedly get from Mother Sphinx.”

”Civilization steals nature from us and compounds the theft with art.”

”Tell me about Professor Humzel,” you went on, ”for I know I should like him, merely from the way he writes. One always pictures the German professor as a dried-up mind in a dried-up body, but in this book one is conscious of real flesh and blood. He is a young man, I'm sure.”

”Sixty-two.”

”He has a young heart, then,” you a.s.serted. ”Is he as interesting to talk with as he makes himself in his book?”

”Professor Humzel is very silent.”

”The people who have something to say are usually so,” you sighed.

”A drum must be empty to make a noise,” I said, smiling, ”and perhaps the converse is true.”

I cannot say what there was in that walk which cheered me so, except your praise of my book,--sweeter far though that was than the world's kindly opinion; yet over and above that, in our brief interchange of words, I was made conscious that there was sympathy between us,--a sympathy so positive that something like our old-time friends.h.i.+p seemed beginning. And the thought made me so happy that for a time my troubles were almost forgotten.

Good-night, Maizie.

XII

_March 3._ Fate seemed determined that our lives should be closely connected. In December Mr. Blodgett wrote asking me to call at his office, and he was already smiling when his boy pa.s.sed me through the door at which so many had to tarry.

”There are a good many kinds of fools,” was his welcoming remark, ”but one of the commonest is the brand who think because they can do one thing well, they ought to be able to do the exact opposite. I've known men who could grow rich out of brewing beer, who kept themselves poor through thinking they knew all about horses; I've known women who queened it in parlors, who went to smash because they believed themselves inspired actresses; I've sat here in this office thirty years, and grown rich through the belief of clergymen, doctors, merchants, farmers,--the whole box and dice,--that they were heaven-born financiers, and could play us Wall Street men even at our own game.

Whatever else you do in this world, doctor, don't think that because you can talk a dozen languages, they fit you to be a successful mute.”

”When you are in this mood, Mr. Blodgett, I can be nothing else,” I interpolated, as he paused a moment for breath.

”Alexander Whitely,” he went on, smiling, ”probably knows more about petroleum and kerosene than any other man in the world, and he's made himself rich by his knowledge. But it doesn't satisfy him to be on the top of his own heap; he wants to get on the top of some other fellow's.

In short, he has an itch to be something he isn't, and the darned fool's gone and bought a daily newspaper with the idea that he is going to be a great editor!”

”His lamp of genius will not go out for want of oil,” I remarked.

”For a moment he showed one glimmer of sense: he came to me for advice,”

said Mr. Blodgett in evident enjoyment. ”I told him to get an A 1 business manager, to make you chief editor, let you pick your staff, and then blow in all the money you and the business end asked for, and never go inside the building himself. It was too good sense for him, for he's daft with the idea of showing the world how to edit a paper. But my advice simmered down to this: if you want to be his private secretary, at four thousand a year, and pretend to revise his editorials, but really write them for him, I guess you can have the position. Of course he is to think he writes the rubbish.”

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