then for an
idea. Those were happy, innocent, amateur days. That is: when my
thoughts got stalled I would throw myself on a couch for a bit, or I
would look out at my window, or I took a turn about Gramercy Park for a
breath of air. Reviews sometimes had to be in by the following day,
or, so my editor would declare to me with much vigour over the
telephone, the paper would go to smash; and then he would hold them in
type for three weeks. But they rarely had to be done within a couple
of hours or less.

In the course of time I got down to brass tacks; I took a staff
position, a desk job. It was up to me to review everything going, in a
steady ceaseless grind. I began work at half past nine in the morning.
When I was commuting I began earlier, taking up a book on the train.
Between nine thirty and a quarter to eleven I did a book, say, on the
extermination of the house-fly; from then until lunch time, three
hundred words on a very pleasant novel called, for instance, "Roast
Beef, Medium"; in the afternoon, three-quarters of a column on a
"History of the American Negro"; winding up the day, perhaps, with a
lively article about a popular book on "Submarine Diving and Light
Houses"; and taking home at night the "Note Books of Samuel Butler." I
began the morrow, very likely, with an "omnibus article" lumping
together five books on the Panama Canal. And then, as the publishers
of the latest book on art had turned in a double-column
hundred-agate-line "ad" the week before, it was necessary to do
something serious "for" that masterpiece. I reviewed a dictionary and
a couple of cookery books. At the holiday season I polished off a
jumble of Christmas and New Year's cards, a pile of picture calendars,
and a table full of "juveniles." Woman suffrage, alcoholism, New
Thought, socialism, minor poetry, big game hunting, militarism,
athletics, architecture, eugenics, industry, European travel,
education, eroticism, red blood fiction, humour, uplift books, white
slavery, nature study, aviation, bygone kings (and their mistresses),
statesmen, scientists, poverty, disease, and crime, I had always with
me. I became a slightly bald reviewer.

Books of theology and of philosophy were given out to a theologian;
books concerning the dramatic art were done by the dramatic critic; and
those on music went to the music critic. We had an occasional letter
from Paris on current French literature.

In addition to writing (for I was