d have been a literary critic--that
little book of essays of his still sells, you know; not much but there's
a demand for a dozen copies every year and that's a good deal for an
American who's been dead for thirty. Well, that's where the children get
their liking for things like that--I've got it too, a little--I could
have done something there if I'd had time. But I never had time.

"I could have done it when I got out of Harvard--drifted along like half
a dozen people I know, played at law, played at writing, played always
and forever at being a gentleman--ended up as an officer of the Century
Club with what little money I had in an annuity. But I couldn't stand
the idea of just scraping along. And for nearly ten years I put those
things aside.

"You know about my going West and the way I lived there. It wasn't
easy when I'd been at Harvard and gone everywhere in New York and
Boston--starting in so far below the bottom that you couldn't even see
the bottom unless you squinted your eyes. But I never took a job with
more money if I thought I could learn anything in a job with less--and
every place I went I stayed until I could handle the job of the man two
places ahead of me--and if I didn't get his job when I asked for it I
went somewhere else. I don't think I read a book except a technical one
for the first five years. And after that, when the chain-stores started
going they asked me back to New York--a big offer too--but it wasn't the
kind I wanted and I threw it down. I knew just how I wanted to come back
to New York and that's the way I came.

"I don't suppose my morals were too edifying those years. But they were
as good as the men I went with and I kept myself in hand. I saw men go
to pieces with drink--and I didn't drink. I saw men go to pieces over
women--and I kept away from that kind of woman. A man has to have women
in his life no matter how much you talk about it--but I took the kind
with the price-tag because when you paid them you were through. I could
have married a dozen times if I'd wanted but I didn't want--that old
hocus-pocus of tradition was still with me, stronger than death--I
thought I knew the kind of wife I wanted and she was in the East.

"Then the partnership with Jessup came and I took it. And after a year
I was made. I wasn't the last of one of the penniless old families
that give each other dinners once a month and pretend they're the
real society because they haven't money enough to t