If I go back to the 'Record' and report that I failed to get an interview, I won't keep this job. So won't you please write an article for me, and let me pay for it at the rate of ten cents a word?"
You may share a smile over this queer situation. I pleaded embarrassment, I argued with the young lady that I couldn't possibly take her money. But she argued back, very charmingly; she would be heart-broken if I did not consent. So at last I said:. "All right, I will write you an article. How many words do you want?"
The young lady meditated; she figured for a while on the back of her note-book; and finally she said: "I think I'd like fifty words, please."
Really, I explained, I couldn't express my views on such a complicated subject in the limits of a night letter; so the young lady raised her bid to a hundred words. In the end we had to break off negotiations, and she went away disappointed. I was told afterwards by friends that she published an article in the "Record," describing this interview, and having an amusing time with me; so presumably her job was saved. I didn't see her article, for the "Record" is an evening paper, and publishes half a dozen editions, no two alike, and the only way you can find out what it says about you is to stand on the street-corner for six or eight hours, and catch each fleeting edition as it fleets.
I have come to the end of my own experiences. I read the manuscript and the proofs, over and over, as I have to do, and a guilty feeling haunts me. Will the radical movement consider that I have forced upon it a ventilation of my own egotisms, in the guise of a work on Journalism? I cannot be sure; but at least I can say this: Have patience, and read the second part of the book, in which you will find little about myself, and a great deal about other people, to whom you owe your trust and affection; also a mass of facts about your Journalism, without reference to anybody's personality.
