James Speyer, of Speyer Bros., was thinking, he believed, of engaging a secretary, and that possibly--he could not say for certain--he might, when he next saw him, suggest my name for the post. "Of course," he added, still more cautiously, "you will understand I must make inquiries about you at the Times." He promised to let me know if anything further came of it. For many weeks I heard no word. Then I wrote. The reply asked me to call at his office. He was kindness and sympathy personified. "The Times gives you an excellent character," he informed me, "and say they will be very sorry to lose you. I am sorry there has been this delay." He handed me a personal letter to James Speyer. He invited me to dinner in his house the following evening. Before brushing up my dress-suit for the occasion--my first dinner in a decent house for many years--I had seen Mr. Speyer and had been engaged at a salary of $2,000 a year for a morning job, from 8 till 2 o'clock daily, with a general supervision during the day of his town and country houses, horses, servants, charities, and numerous other interests.
The dinner in Mr. Dodge's Fifth Avenue palace was a veritable banquet to me. Immediately opposite, across the avenue, was the other palace occupied by James Speyer. It was all rather bewildering, a new world with a vengeance. Years among the outcast of the city had not precisely polished my manners, nor could I feel at my ease thus suddenly among decent folk again. I remember being absurdly tongue-tied, shy and awkward, until M. de Chaillu, who was present, began to talk about books, stars, natural history, and other splendid things, and took me with him into some unimaginable seventh heaven. I had moments of terror too, but the strongest emotion I remember is the deep gratitude I felt towards Mr. Dodge. A further tiny detail clings as well, when I was invited for a week-end to the Dodge country house on the Hudson, and was bathing with the son. He was, like myself, six feet three inches, well built, but well covered too, his age perhaps close on forty. As we stood
on the spring-board waiting for our second dive, he looked
