"You see, I cannot possibly go home to England again until I have made good somehow."
"Have you written anything?" he asked, after listening patiently with raised eyebrows.
"Well--no, I haven't, not yet, I'm afraid." I explained that I wanted to begin, though what I really wanted was only paid employment.
The author of "Van Bibber" and "A Soldier of Fortune" looked me up and down and then chuckled. After a moment's silence, he got up, led me across the hall to another door, opened it without knocking and said to a man who was seated at a table smothered in papers:
"This is Mr. Blackwood, an Englishman, who wants to write something for you. He is prepared to write anything--from Eastern philosophy to 'How to run a hotel in Canada.'"
The door closed behind me, with no word of farewell, and I learned that the man facing me was the editor of Harper's Young People. His name, if I remember rightly, was Storey, and he was an Englishman, who, curiously enough, almost at once mentioned my father. He had been an employé of the G.P.O. in London. He was unpleasant, supercilious, patronizing and off-hand, proud of his editorial power. He gave me, however, my first assignment--to write a short, descriptive article about a cargo of wild animals that had just arrived for the New York "Zoo." I hurried off to the steamer, bought some paper, wrote the article in a pew of Trinity Church in Lower Broadway, and returned three hours later to submit it. Storey read it and said without enthusiasm it would do, but when I asked "Is it good?" he shook his head with the comment "Well--some men would have made more of it perhaps." It was printed, however, and in due course I got ten dollars for it. I inquired if I could do something else. He took my address. No further results followed. Evidently, I realized, writing was not my line, and both Kay and the Red Indian Medicine Man were
mistaken.
