The Great God Success | Page 9

if a child might have written it. I
don't see how you get such effects without any style at all. You just let
your story tell itself."
"Well, you see," replied Howard, "I am writing for the masses, and fine
writing would be wasted upon them."
"You're right," said Jackman, "we don't need literature on this
paper--long words, high-sounding phrases and all that sort of thing.
What we want is just plain, simple English that goes straight to the
point."
"Like Shakespeare's and Bunyan's," suggested Kittredge with a grin.
"Shakespeare? Fudge!" scoffed Jackman. "Why he couldn't have made
a living as a space-writer on a New York newspaper."
"No, I don't think he would have staid long in Park Row," replied
Kittredge with a subtlety of meaning that escaped Jackman.
A few days before New Year's the Managing Editor looked up and
smiled as Howard was passing his desk.
"How goes it?" he asked.
"Oh, not so badly," Howard answered, "but I am a good deal depressed
at times."

"Depressed? Nonsense! You've got everything--youth, health and
freedom. And by the way, you are going on space the first of the year.
Our rule is a year on salary before space. But we felt that it was about
time to strengthen the rule by making an exception."
Howard stammered thanks and went away. This piece of news, dropped
apparently so carelessly by Mr. King, meant a revolution in fortune for
him. It was the transition from close calculation on twenty-five dollars
a week to wealth beyond his most fanciful dreams of six months ago.
Not having the money-getting instinct and being one of those who
compare their work with the best instead of with the inferior, Howard
never felt that he was "entitled to a living." He had a lively sense of
gratitude for the money return for his services which prudence
presently taught him to conceal.
"Space" meant to him eighty dollars a week at least--circumstances of
ease. So vast a sum did it seem that he began to consider the problem of
investment. "I have been not badly off on twenty-five dollars a week,"
he thought. "With, well, say forty dollars a week I shall be able to
satisfy all my wants. I can save at least forty a week and that will mean
an independence with a small income by the time I am thirty-four."
But--a year after he was put "on space" he was still just about even with
his debts. He seemed to himself to be living no better and it was only
by careful counting-up that he could see how that dream of
independence had eluded him. A more extensive wardrobe, a little
better food, a more comfortable suite of rooms, an occasional dinner to
some friends, loans to broken-down reporters, and the mysteriously
vanished two thousand dollars was accounted for.
Howard tried to retrench, devised small ingenious schemes for saving
money, lectured himself severely and frequently for thus trifling away
his chance to be a free man. But all in vain. He remained poor; and,
whenever he gave the matter thought, which was not often, gloomy
forebodings as to the future oppressed him. "I shall find myself old," he
thought, "with nothing accomplished, with nothing laid by. I shall be an
old drudge." He understood the pessimistic tone of his profession. All
about him were men like himself--leading this gambler's life of feverish

excitement and evanescent achievement, earning comfortable incomes
and saving nothing, looking forward to the inevitable time of failing
freshness and shattered nerves and declining income.
He spasmodically tried to write stories for the magazines, contrived
plots for novels and plays, wrote first chapters, first scenes of first acts.
But the exactions of newspaper life, the impossibility of continuous
effort at any one piece of work and his natural inertia--he was inert but
neither idle nor lazy--combined to make futile his efforts to emancipate
himself from hand-to-mouth journalism.
He had been four years a reporter and was almost twenty-six years old.
He was known throughout his profession in New York, although he had
never signed an article. One remarkable "human interest" story after
another had forced the knowledge of his abilities upon the reporters and
editors of other newspapers. And he was spoken of as one of the best
and in some respects the best "all round reporter" in the city. This
meant that he was capable to any emergency--that, whatever the subject,
he could write an accurate, graphic, consecutive and sustained story
and could get it into the editor's hands quickly.
Indeed he possessed facility to the perilous degree. What others
achieved only after long toil, he achieved without effort. This was due
chiefly to the fact that he never relaxed but was at all times the
journalist, reading voraciously newspapers, magazines and