"My boy," he began, regarding me through his spectacles benignly. At that familiar address my heart leaped. "Let me give you some advice." My heart fell. "Take those letters and lock them up to read when you are ten years older. Then start out and go from office to office until you get a place. Don't be discouraged. Some day you'll break in somewhere."
"But I want to work on _The Record_," I cried. "It's politics agree with mine--it is Republican. It is a respectable paper. It----"
Mr. Hanks was leaning over his desk. "Pile," he said, addressing the fat man who sat across from him, "that was a good beat we had on the Worthing divorce--I see all the evenings are after it hard. We must have a second-day story."
"I am ready," I said a little louder, "to begin with any kind of work."
Mr. Hanks looked up as though surprised that I was still there. "You've come at a bad time," he said brusquely. "Summer--we are letting men go every day. But don't get discouraged. I worked four months for my first job, and I didn't come from McGraw either. Keep going the rounds."
Then he seemed to forget my existence and resumed his game of checkers.
His dismissal was a terrible blow, but I had read enough of great men to know that they had to fight for their opportunities, and I was determined not to be a weakling and go down in the first skirmish. For a moment I stood bewildered at the entrance of _The Record_ building, stunned by the unexpected outcome of my visit there. I was indignant at Boller for having raised my hopes so high. I was indignant at Mr. Carmody for not measuring up to Boller's estimate. I was indignant at Mr. Hanks for not making a searching inquiry into my attainments, for his ignorance of McGraw and his amusement over my precious letters. I vowed that some day Mr. Hanks should be put under my magnifying-glass, to shrivel beneath my burning gaze.
To break in somewhere proved a long task. From Miss Minion's boarding-house on Seventeenth Street, where I established myself, I went forth daily to the siege of Park Row. I was shot up to heaven to editorial rooms beneath gilded domes, and as quickly shot down again. I climbed to editorial rooms less exaltedly placed, up dark, bewildering stairways which seemed devised to make approach by them a peril. I soon knew the faces of all the city editors in town, and all the head office-boys were as familiar with mine. At the end of the first round I began to look more kindly on Mr. Hanks and to realize the wisdom of his advice that I lock away my letters. I recalled the varied receptions they had met, and when I started on my second round they were hidden in my trunk. Repeated rebuffs had a salutary effect. My egotism was reduced to a vanishing-point, my pride was quickened, and with my pride my determination to accomplish my purpose. Even had I lacked pride, I must have been nerved to my dogged persistence by the memory of Gladys Todd with Doctor Todd and the three Miss Minnicks speeding me to my triumphs. Every evening when I came home, tired and discouraged, to Miss Minion's, I found a letter addressed to me in a tall, angular hand--a very fat letter which seemed to promise a wealth of news and encouragement. But Gladys Todd could say less on more paper than I had believed possible. Encouragement she gave me, but never news. News would have spoiled the graceful flow of her sentences. Yet she was wonderfully good in the way she received my accounts of my disappointments. She was prouder than ever of "her knight"; her faith in him was firmer than ever; as she sat in the evening, in the soft light of the lamp, she was thinking of me with lance couched charging again and again against the embattled world.