Chapter 11

THE OLD TEACHER

"Chicago, Illinois.

"Dear Carol and David--

"It is most remarkable that you two can keep on laughing away out there by yourselves. It makes me think perhaps there is something fine in this being married business that sort of makes up for the rest of it. I think it must take an exceptionally good eyesight to discern sunshine on the slopes of sickness. If I were traveling that route, I am convinced I should find it led me through dark valleys and over stony pathways with storm clouds and thunders and lightnings smashing all around my head.

"You admonished me to talk about myself and leave you alone. Well, I suppose you know more about yourselves than I could possibly tell you, and since it is your own little baby sister, I am sure you are more than willing to turn your telescope away from the sunny slopes a while for a glimpse of my business dabbles.

"This is Chicago.

"Aunt Grace was rendered more speechless than ever when I announced my intention of coming, and Prudence was shocked. But father and I talked it over, and he looked at me in that funny searching way he has and then said:

"'Good for you, Connie, you have the right idea. Chicago isn't big enough to swallow you, but it won't take you long to eat Chicago bodily. Of course you ought to go.'

"I know it is not safe to praise men too highly, they are so easily convinced of their astounding virtues, but that time I couldn't resist shaking hands with father and I said, and meant it:

"'Father, you are the only one in the world. I don't believe even the Lord could make your duplicate.'

"'Mr. Nesbitt was very angry because I left them'. He said that after he took me, a stupid little country ignoramus, and made something out of me, my desertion was nothing short of rank ingratitude and religious hypocrisy and treason to the land of my birth. One might have inferred that he picked me out of the gutter, brushed the dirt off, smoothed my ragged looks, and seated me royally in his stenographic chair, and made a business lady out of me. But it didn't work.

"I came.

"Mr. Baker, the minister there, is back of it. He met me on the street one day.

"'I hear you are literary,' he said.

"'Well, I think I can write,' I answered modestly.

"Then he said he had a third-half-nephew by marriage, to whom, ground under the heel of financial incompetency, he had once loaned the startling sum of fifty dollars,--I say startling, because it startled me to know a preacher ever had that much ready cash ahead of his grocery bill. Anyhow, the third-half-nephew, with the fifty dollars as a nucleus,--I think Providence must have multiplied it a little, for our fifty dollars never accomplished miracles like that,--but with that fifty dollars as a starter he did a little plunging for himself, and is now owner and editor of a great publishing house in Chicago.

"And Mr. Baker, the old minister, kept him going and coming, you might say, by sending him at frequent intervals, bright and budding lights with which to illuminate his publications. It seems the third-half-nephew by marriage, in gratitude for the fifty dollars, never refused a position to any satellite his uncle chose to recommend. And Mr. Baker glowed with delight that he had been able, from the unliterary center of Centerville to send so many candles to shine in the chandelier of Chicago.

"All I had to do was to come.

"As I said before, I came.

"I went out to Mrs. Holly's on Prairie Avenue and the next morning set out for the Carver Publishing Company, and found it, with the assistance of most of the policemen and street-car conductors as well as a large number of ordinary pedestrians encountered between Prairie on the South Side, and Wilson Avenue on the North. I asked for Mr. Carver, and handed him Mr. Baker's letter. He shook hands with me in a melancholy way and said:

"'When do you want to begin? Where do you live?'

"'To-morrow. I have a room out on the south side, but I will move over here to be nearer the office.'

"'Hum,--you'd better wait a while.'

"'Isn't it a permanent position?' I asked suspiciously.

"'Oh, yes, the position is permanent, but you may not be.'

"'Mr. Baker assured me--'

"'Oh, sure, he's right. You've got the job. But so far, he has only sent me nineteen, and the best of them lasted just fourteen days.'

"'Then you are already counting on firing me before the end of two weeks,' I said indignantly.

"'No. I am not counting on it, but I am prepared for the worst.'

"'What is the job? What am I supposed to do?'

"'You must study our publications and do a little stenographic work, and read manuscripts and reject the bum ones,--which is an endless task,--and accept the fairly decent ones,--which takes about five minutes a week,--and read exchanges and clip shorts for filling, and write squibs of a spicy nature, and do various and sundry other things and you haven't the slightest idea how to start.'

"'No, I haven't, but you get me started, and I'll keep going all right.'

"The next morning he asked how long it took me to get to the office from Prairie, and I said:

"'I moved last night, I have a room down on Diversey Boulevard now.'

"He looked me over thoughtfully. Then he said: 'You ought to be a poet.'

"'Why? I haven't any poetic ability that I know of.'

"'Probably not, but you can get along without that. What a poet needs first of all is nerve.'

"I didn't think of anything apt to say in return so I got to work. Day after day he tried me out on something new and watched me when he thought I didn't notice, and went over my work very carefully. One morning he asked me to write five hundred words on 'The First Job in a Big City,' bringing out a country aspirant's sensations on the occasion of his first interview with a prospective employer.

"I still felt so strongly about his insolent assurance that I couldn't hold down his little old job, that I had no trouble at all with the assignment. He read it slowly and made no comment, but he gave it a place in the current issue. And then came a blessed day when he said, 'Well, you are on for good, Miss Starr. I now believe in the scriptural injunction about seventy times seven, and a kind Providence cut the margin down for me. I forgive Uncle Baker for the nineteen atrocities at last.'

"I was very happy about it, for I do love the work and the others in the office are splendid, so keen and clever, and Mr. Carver is really wonderful. We are not a large concern, and we have to lend a hand wherever hands are needed. So I am getting five times my fifteen dollars a week in experience, and I am singing inside every minute I feel so good about everything. The workers are all efficient and enthusiastic, and we are great friends. We gossip affectionately about whoever is absent, and hold a jubilee at the restaurant down-stairs when any one gets ahead with an extra story. No other publishers have come rapping at my door in a mad attempt to steal me away from Mr. Carver. I have no bulky mail soliciting stories from my facile pen. But I am making good with Mr. Carver, and that's the thing right now.

"Have I fallen in love yet? Carol, dear, I always understood that when folks get married they lose their sentimentality. Are you the proving exception? My acquaintance with Chicago masculinity is confined to the office, the Methodist Church, and the boarding-house. The office force is all married but the office boy. The Methodist congregation is composed of women, callow youths and bald heads of families. Women are counted out, of necessity. I am beyond callow youths, and not advanced to heads of families. Why, I haven't a chance to fall in love,--worse luck, too, for I need the experience in my business.

"At the boarding-house I do have a little excitement now and then. The second night after my installation a man walked into my room without knocking,--that is, he opened the door.

"'Gee, the old lady wasn't bluffing,' he said, in a tone of surprise.

"It was early in the evening and he was properly dressed and looked harmless, so I wasn't frightened.

"'Good evening,' I said in my reserved way.

"'Gave you my room, did she?' he asked.

"'She gave me this one,--for a consideration.'

"'Yes, it is mine,' he said sadly. 'She has threatened to do it, lo, these many years, but I never believed she would. Faith in fickle human nature,--ah, how futile.'

"'Yes?'

"'Yes. You see now and then I go off with the boys, and spend my money instead of paying my board, and when I come back I expect my room to be awaiting me. It always has been. The old lady said she would rent it the next time, but she had said it so many times! Well, well, well. Broke, too. It is a sad world, isn't it? Did you ever pray for death?'

"'No, I did not. And if you will excuse me, I think perhaps you had better fight it out with the landlady. I have paid a month's rent in advance.'

"'A month's rent!' He advanced and shook hands with me warmly before I knew what he was doing. 'A month in advance. It is an honor to touch your hand. Alas, how many moons have waned since I came in personal contact with one who could pay a month in advance.'

"'The landlady--'

"'Oh, I am going. No room is big enough for two. Lots of fellows room together to save money, but it is too multum in too parvum; I think I prefer to spend the money. I have never resorted to it, even in my brokest days. I didn't leave my pipe here, did I?'

"'I haven't seen it,' I said very coldly.

"'Well, all right. Don't get cross about it. Out into the dark and cold, out into the wintry night, without a cent to have and hold, but landladies are always right.'

"He smiled appealingly but I frowned at him with my most ministerial air.

"'I am a poet,' he said apologetically. 'I can't help going off like that. It isn't a mental aberration. I do it for a living.'

"I had nothing to say.

"'My card.' He handed it to me with a flourish, a neatly engraved one, with the word 'advertisement' in the corner. I should have haughtily spurned it, but I was too curious to know his name. It was William Canfield Brewer.

"'Well, good night. May your sleep be undisturbed by my ghost stalking solitary through your slumbers. May no fumes from my pipe interfere with the violet de parme you represent. If you want any advertising done, just call on me, William Canfield Brewer. I write poetry, draw pictures, make up stories, and prove to the absolute satisfaction of the most skeptical public that any article is even better than you say it is. I command a princely salary,--but I can't command it long enough. Adieu, I go, my lady, fare thee well.'

"'Good night.'

"I could hardly wait for breakfast, I was so anxious to ask about him. I gleaned the following facts. The landlady had packed his belongings in an old closet and rented me the room in his absence, as he surmised. He is a darling old idiot who would rather buy the chauffeur a cigar than pay for his board. He says it is less grubby. He is too good a fellow to make both ends meet. He is too devoted to his friends to neglect them for business. He can write the best ads in Chicago and get the most money for it, but he can't afford the time. Mrs. Gaylord is a stingy old cat, she always gets her money if she waits long enough, and he pays three times as much as anything is worth when he does pay. Mrs. Gaylord's niece is infatuated with him, without reciprocation, and Mrs. Gaylord wanted her, the niece, to stick to the grocer's son; she says there is more money in being advertised than advertising others. Wouldn't Prudence faint if she could hear this gossip? Don't tell her,--and I wouldn't repeat it for the world.

"I hoped he would come back for another room,--there is lots of experience in him, I am sure, but he sent for his things. So that is over. I found his pipe. And I am keeping it so if he gets smokey and comes back he may have it.

"Oh, I tell you, Carol, Experience may teach in a very expensive school, but she makes the lessons so interesting, it is really worth the price.

"Lots of love to you both,

"From

"CONNIE."