mporarily at least--out of conceit
with fiction. Why go on? Why spend more time and money on a vain attempt
to dispose of this manuscript?"

Falling asleep at last, I regained a part of my courage, and at
breakfast a faint glow of hope crept into my thinking. At nine o'clock I
took the day train and in silence rode for nearly twelve hours,
retracing the thirty years which lay between my first view of Manhattan
and this my hundredth reentrance. With no thrill of excitement I crossed
the ferry and having registered at a small hotel on Thirty-fourth
Street, went to bed at nine o'clock completely worn out with my journey.

A long night's sleep and a pot of delicious coffee for breakfast put so
much sunshine into my world that I set out for Franklin Square with a
gambler's countenance, resolute to conceal my dismay from my friends and
especially from my publisher. There was something in the very air of
Broadway which generated confidence.

Harpers' editors were genial, respectful, but by no means enthusiastic
concerning my autobiographic manuscript, although I assured Duneka that
I had vastly improved it since he had read it a year before.

"That may be," he granted, "but it is not fiction and nothing serializes
but fiction. We'll be glad to schedule it as a book, but I don't see any
place for it in our magazine." And then--more to get rid of me than for
any other reason, he added, "You might see _Collier's_. Mark Sullivan is
the editor up there now; it might be that he could use something of
yours."

Duneka's indifference even more than his shunting my precious manuscript
into the street brought back my cloud of doubt, for it indicated a loss
of faith in me. To him I was a squeezed lemon. Nevertheless I took his
hint. Sullivan, I knew and liked, and while I had small hope of
interesting him in _The Middle Border_, I did think he might buy one or
two of my short stories.

The _Collier's_ plant humming with speed, prosperous and commercial, was
not reassuring to me, but I kept on through the maze until I reached
Sullivan's handsome room, where I was given an easy chair and told to
wait, "the editor will see you in a few minutes."

Alert, kindly, cordial, Mark greeted me and taking a seat, fixed his
keen blue, kindly eyes upon me. "I'm glad to see you," he said, and I
believed he meant it. He went on, "This is the psychological moment for
us both. I am looking for American material and I want something of
yours. What h