on upon me--although I found out what I could expect from
him--that is nothing here but apparently a place abroad if I wanted it.
But he thought Congress was perfectly feasible but the greatest folly
to go there.

DICK.

CHAPTER V

FIRST TRAVEL ARTICLES

For Richard these first years in New York were filled to overflowing
with many varied interests, quite enough to satisfy most young men of
twenty-seven. He had come and seen and to a degree, so far as the
limitation of his work would permit, had conquered New York, but
Richard thoroughly realized that New York was not only a very small
part of the world but of his own country, and that to write about his
own people and his own country and other people and other lands he must
start his travels at an early age, and go on travelling until the end.
And for the twenty-five years that followed that was what Richard did.
Even when he was not on his travels but working on a novel or a play at
Marion or later on at Mount Kisco, so far as it was possible he kept in
touch with events that were happening and the friends that he had made
all over the globe. He subscribed to most of the English and French
illustrated periodicals and to one London daily newspaper which every
day he read with the same interest that he read half a dozen New York
newspapers and the interest was always that of the trained editor at
work. Richard was not only physically restless but his mind
practically never relaxed. When others, tired after a hard day's work
or play, would devote the evening to cards or billiards or chatter,
Richard would write letters or pore over some strange foreign magazine,
consult maps, make notes, or read the stories of his contemporaries.
He practically read every American magazine from cover to
cover--advertisements were a delight to him, and the finding of a new
writer gave him as much pleasure as if he had been the fiction editor
who had accepted the first story by the embryo genius. The official
organs of our army and navy he found of particular interest. Not only
did he thus follow the movements of his friends in these branches of
the service but if he read of a case wherein he thought a sailor or a
soldier had been done an injustice he would promptly take the matter up
with the authorities at Washington, and the results he obtained were
often not only extremely gratifying to the wronged party but caused
Richard no end of pleasure.

According to my brother