March 2. The truth of the difference of quality between the business man and the scholar was quickly brought home to me. On the last evening of my visit, Mr. Blodgett revealed the reason for his latest kindness. "I got you here," he explained, "to look you over and see what you were fit for, thinking I might work you in somewhere. No," he continued, as he saw the questioning hopefulness on my face, "you wouldn't do in business. You've got a sight too much conscience and sympathy, and a sight too little drive. All business is getting the best of somebody else, and you're the kind of chap who'd let a fellow up just because you'd got him down." Seeing the sadness in my face, for I knew too well he had fathomed me, he added kindly, "Don't get chicken-hearted over what I say. It's easy enough to outwit a man; the hard thing is not to do it. I'd go out of the trade to-morrow, if it weren't for the boss and Agnes, for I get tired of the meanness of the whole thing. But they want to cut a figure, and that isn't to be done in this town for nothing. I'll find something for you yet that sha'n't make you sell your heart and your soul as well as your time."

I was too full of my love and my purpose, however, for this to discourage me. The moment my determination to remain in New York was taken, I wrote to Jastrow, Humzel, and others of my German friends, telling them that for business reasons I had decided to be known as Rudolph Hartzmann, and asking if they would stretch friendship so far as to give me letters in that name to such American publishers and editors as they knew. Excepting Jastrow, they all responded with introductions so flattering that I was almost ashamed to present them, and he wrote me that he had not offered my books for sale, and begged me to reconsider my refusal of the professorship. He even offered, if I would accept the appointment, to divide with me his tuition fees, and suggested that his own advancing years were a pledge that his position would erelong be vacant for me to step into. It almost broke my heart to have to write him that I could not accept his generous offer. In July I received a second letter from him, most touching in its attempt to keep back the grief he felt, but yielding to my determination. He sent me many good introductions, and submitted a bid for my library from a bookseller; but knowing the books to be worth at least double the offer, I held the sale in abeyance.

My first six months in New York disheartened me greatly, though now I know that I succeeded far better than I could have expected to do, in the dullness of the summer. My work was the proof-reading of my book of travel in its varying polyglots, seeing through the press English versions of my two text-books, and writing a third in both English and German. Furthermore, my letters of introduction had made me known to a number of the professors of Columbia College, and by their influence I received an appointment to deliver a course of lectures on race movements the following winter; so I prepared my notes in this leisure time. But this work was far too little to fill my time, and I wrote all kinds of editorials, essays, and reviews, fairly wearing out the editors of the various magazines and newspapers with my frequent calls and articles. Finally I attempted to sell my books to several libraries; but though the tomes and the price both tempted several, none had the money to spend on such a collection.

My book of travel was published in September, was praised by the reviews, and at once sprang into a good sale for a work of that class; for Europe is interested in whatever bears on her cancer growth, commonly called the Eastern question. Since Europeans approved the book, Americans at once bought and discussed it; to prove, I suppose, that as a nation we are no longer tainted with provincialism,—as if that very subservience to transatlantic opinion were not the best proof that the virus still works within us. It was issued anonymously, through the fear that if I put my pseudonym on the title-page it might lead to inquiry about the author which would reveal his identity with Donald Maitland, for whom I only wished oblivion. As a result the question of authorship was much mooted, some declaring a well-known Oxford professor to be the man, others ascribing the volume to a famous German traveler, and Humzel being named by some; but most of the reviews suggested that it was the work of an Eastern savant, and I presume that my style was tinged with orientalism.

You cannot tell what a delight it was to me to learn, at our first meeting in the autumn, that you had read my book. I went in November to the Lenox Library to verify a date, and found you there. I could not help interrupting your reading for a moment,—I had so longed for a glimpse and a word,—and you took my intrusion in good part. I drew a book and pretended to read, merely to veil my covert watching of you; and when you rose to go, I asked permission to walk with you.

"Your notebook suggests that you are a writer by profession, Dr. Hartzmann?" you surmised.

"Yes."

"And you have to come to America for material?"

"I have come to America permanently."

"How unusual!"

"In what respect?"

"For a European writer to come to New York to do more than lecture about himself, have his vanity and purse fed, and return home to write a book about us that we alone read."

I laughed and said, "You make me very glad that I am the exception to the rule."

"I presume more would make the venture if they found the atmosphere less uncongenial. New York as a whole is so absorbed in the task of trans-shipping the products of the busiest nations of two continents that everything is ranked as secondary that does not subserve that end: and the Muses starve."

"I suppose New York is not the best of places in which to live by art or letters, if compared with London or Paris; yet if a man can do what the world wants done, he can earn a livelihood here."

"But he cannot gain the great prizes that alone are worth the winning, I fear. I have noticed that American writers only reach American audiences, while European authors not merely win attention at home, but have vogue and sale here. The London or Paris label is quite as effective in New York or Chicago in selling books as in selling clothes."

"I suppose cultivated Europe is as heedless of the newer peoples as the peoples of the Orient are of those of the Occident. Yet I think that if as good work were turned out in this country as in the Old World, the place of its production would not seriously militate against its success."

"And have you found it so?"

"Nothing I have yet written in this country merits Continental attention."

"I hope you have succeeded to your own satisfaction?"

"It may amuse you to know that though I had many good letters of introduction to editors in this country, I could not get a single article accepted till some friends of mine in Asia came to my aid."

"You speak in riddles."

"Perhaps you remember reading, last August, of an outbreak of some tribes in the Hindoo Kush? Those hill peoples are in a state of perennial ferment, and usually Europe pays no attention to their bellicose proceedings; but luckily for me, the English premier, at that particular moment, was holding his unwilling Parliament together in an attempt to pass something, and finding it intractable in that matter, he cleverly used this outbreak to divert attention and excite enthusiasm. Rising in the House of Commons, he virtually charged the outbreak to Russian machination against the beloved Emir, and pledged the nation to support that civilized humanitarian against the barbaric despot of Russia. At once the papers were full of unintelligible cablegrams telling of the doings in those far-away mountains; and my hurriedly written editorials and articles, which nevertheless showed some comprehension of the geography and people, were snapped up avidly, and from that time I have found papers or periodicals glad to print what I write."

You laughed, and said, "How strangely the world is tied together in these days, that the speech of an English prime minister about some Asian septs should give a German author entrÉe to New York editorial sanctums!"

"The cables have done more in aid of the brotherhood of man than all the efforts of the missionaries."

"I thought you were a conservative, and disapproved of modern innovations," you suggested archly.

"With innovators, yes."

"Then the Levantine does not entirely disapprove of our Hesperian city?"

"My knowledge of New York is about as deep," I answered, smiling, "as my Eastern blood."

"Only skin-deep," you said.

"Just sufficient for a disguise."

"As long as you are silent, yes."

"Is my English so unmistakable?"

"Not your tongue, but your thought. Of course your vicinage, costume, and complexion made me for a moment accept your joke of nationality, at that first meeting, but before you had uttered half your defense of the older races I felt sure that you were not a product of one of them."

"Why was that?"

"Because it is only Christians who recognize and speak for the rights of other peoples."

"You forget that the religion of Buddha is toleration. We Christians preach the doctrine, but practice extermination, forgiving our enemies after killing them," I corrected. "I do not think we differ much in works from even El Mahdi."

"Would El Mahdi ever have spoken for other races?"

"You know the weak spot in my armor, Miss Walton," I was obliged to confess.

"That is due to you, Dr. Hartzmann. What you stated that night interested me so deeply that I have been reading up about the Eastern races and problems. I wonder if you have seen this new book of travel, The Debatable Lands between the East and West?"

"Yes," I assented, thinking that twenty over-lookings of it in manuscript and proof entitled me to make the claim.

"You will be amused to hear that, when reading it, I thought of you as the probable writer, not merely because it begins in the Altai range and ends at Tangier, but as well because some of the ideas resemble yours. Mr. Whitely, however, tells me he has private information that Professor Humzel is the author. Do you know him?"

"He was my professor of history at Leipzig."

"That accounts for the agreement in thought. You admire the book?"

"I think it is a conscientious attempt to describe what the author saw."

"Ah, it is much more than that!" you exclaimed. "At a dinner in London, this autumn, I sat next the Earl—— next a member of the Indian Council, and he told me he considered it a far more brilliant book than Kinglake's Eothen."

I knew I had no right to continue this subject, but I could not help asking, "You liked it?"

"Very much. It seems to me a deep and philosophic study of present and future problems, besides being a vivid picture of most interesting countries and peoples. It made me long to be a nomad myself, and wander as the author did. The thought of three years of such life, of such freedom, seems to stir in me all the inherited tendency to prowl that we women supposedly get from Mother Sphinx."

"Civilization steals nature from us and compounds the theft with art."

"Tell me about Professor Humzel," you went on, "for I know I should like him, merely from the way he writes. One always pictures the German professor as a dried-up mind in a dried-up body, but in this book one is conscious of real flesh and blood. He is a young man, I'm sure."

"Sixty-two."

"He has a young heart, then," you asserted. "Is he as interesting to talk with as he makes himself in his book?"

"Professor Humzel is very silent."

"The people who have something to say are usually so," you sighed.

"A drum must be empty to make a noise," I said, smiling, "and perhaps the converse is true."

I cannot say what there was in that walk which cheered me so, except your praise of my book,—sweeter far though that was than the world's kindly opinion; yet over and above that, in our brief interchange of words, I was made conscious that there was sympathy between us,—a sympathy so positive that something like our old-time friendship seemed beginning. And the thought made me so happy that for a time my troubles were almost forgotten.

Good-night, Maizie.

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