David Graham Phillips
The Great God Success
A Novel
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066213824
Table of Contents
II. — THE CITY EDITOR RECONSIDERS.
VI. — IN A BOHEMIAN QUICKSAND.
VII. — A LITTLE CANDLE GOES OUT.
VIII. — A STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL.
XII. — MAKING THE MOST OF A MONTH.
XIII. — RECKONING WITH DANVERS.
XIV. — THE NEWS-RECORD GETS A NEW EDITOR.
XVI. — MR. STOKELY IS TACTLESS.
XVII. — A WOMAN AND A WARNING.
XVIII. — HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE.
XXII. — THE SHENSTONE EPISODE.
XXIII. — EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING.
XXIV. — “MR. VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH.”
I. — THE CANDIDATE FROM YALE.
“O your college paper, I suppose?”
“No, I never wrote even a letter to the editor.”
“Took prizes for essays?”
“No, I never wrote if I could help it.”
“But you like to write?”
“I’d like to learn to write.”
“You say you are two months out of college—what college?”
“Yale.”
“Hum—I thought Yale men went into something commercial; law or banking or railroads. ‘Leave hope of fortune behind, ye who enter here’ is over the door of this profession.”
“I haven’t the money-making instinct.”
“We pay fifteen dollars a week at the start.”
“Couldn’t you make it twenty?”
The Managing Editor of the News-Record turned slowly in his chair until his broad chest was full-front toward the young candidate for the staff. He lowered his florid face slowly until his double chin swelled out over his low “stick-up” collar. Then he gradually raised his eyelids until his amused blue eyes were looking over the tops of his glasses, straight into Howard’s eyes.
“Why?” he asked. “Why should we?”
Howard’s grey eyes showed embarrassment and he flushed to the line of his black hair which was so smoothly parted in the middle. “Well—you see—the fact is—I need twenty a week. My expenses are arranged on that scale. I’m not clever at money matters. I’m afraid I’d get in a mess with only fifteen.”
“My dear young man,” said Mr. King, “I started here at fifteen dollars a week. And I had a wife; and the first baby was coming.”
“Yes, but your wife was an energetic woman. She stood right beside you and worked too. Now I have only myself.”
Mr. King raised his eyebrows and became a rosier red. He was evidently preparing to rebuke this audacious intrusion into his private affairs by a stranger whose card had been handed to him not ten minutes before. But Howard’s tone and manner were simple and sincere. And they happened to bring into Mr. King’s mind a rush of memories of his youth and his wife. She had married him on faith. They had come to New York fifteen years before, he to get a place as reporter on the News-Record, she to start a boarding-house; he doubting and trembling, she with courage and confidence for two. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and opened the book of memory at the place where the leaves most easily fell apart:
He is coming home at one