What my narrative lacks of this flavor of luxurious vagrancy must be supplied by the peculiar interest of a cruise which violated every tradition of the annals of yachting, and created precedents which in all human probability will never be followed so long as iron floats on water.

It was part of Mr. Pulitzer's scheme of nautical life to shroud all his movements in mystery. One result of this was that when we were on the yacht we never knew where we were going until we got there. The compass- course at any moment betrayed nothing of Mr. Pulitzer's intentions, for we might turn in at night with the ship heading straight for Naples and wake up in the morning to find ourselves three miles south of the Genoa lighthouse.

Apart from Mr. Pulitzer's fancy, our erratic maneuvers were affected by our need to make good weather out of whatever wind we encountered, on the one hand because J. P., though an excellent sailor, disliked the rolling produced by a beam sea, since it interfered with his walking on deck, and on the other hand, because several of the secretaries suffered from sea-sickness the moment we were off an even keel.

Mr. Pulitzer was not a man prone to be placated by excuses; but he had come to realize that neither a sense of duty nor the hope of reward, neither fear nor courage, can make an agreeable companion out of a man who is seasick. So, unless there was an important reason why we should reach port, we always made a head-wind of anything stronger than a light breeze, and followed the weather round the compass until it was fair for our destination.

As soon as we left Mentone Mr. Pulitzer began the process of education which was designed to fit me for his service.

"When you were in New York," he asked, "what papers did you read?"

"The Sun and The Times in the morning and The Evening Sun and The Evening Post at night," I replied.

"My God! Didn't you read The World?"

"Nothing but the editorial page."

"Why not? What's the matter with it?"

I explained that I was not interested in crime and disaster, to which The World devoted so much space, that I wanted more foreign news than The World found room for, and that I was offended by the big headlines, which compelled me to know things I didn't want to know.

"Go on," he said; "your views are not of any importance, but they're entertaining."

"Well," I continued, "I think The World was excellently described a few years ago in Life. There was a poem entitled, 'New York Newspaper Directory, Revised,' in which a verse was devoted to each of the big New York papers. I believe I can remember the one about The World, if you care to hear it, for I cut the poem out and have kept it among my clippings."

"Certainly, go ahead."

I recited:

"A dual personality is this, Part yellow dog, part patriot and sage; When't comes to facts the rule is hit or miss, While none can beat its editorial page. Wise counsel here, wild yarns the other side, Page six its Jekyll and page one its Hyde; At the same time conservative and rash, The World supplies us good advice and trash."

"That's clever," said Mr. Pulitzer, "but it's absolute nonsense, except about the editorial page. Have you got the clipping with you? I would like to hear what that smart young man has got to say about the other papers."

I went to my cabin, got the poem, and read the whole of it to him—witty characterizations of The Evening Post, The Sun, The Journal, The Tribune, The Times and The Herald. As soon as I had finished reading, Mr. Pulitzer said:

"The man who wrote those verses had his prejudices, but he was clever. I'm glad you read them to me; always read me anything of that kind, anything that is bright and satirical. Now, I'm going to give you a lecture about newspapers, because I want you to understand my point of view. It does not matter whether you agree with it or not, but you have got to understand it if you are going to be of any use to me. But before I begin, you tell me what YOUR ideas are about running a newspaper for American readers."

I pleaded that I had never given the matter much thought, and that I had little to guide me, except my own preferences and the memory of an occasional discussion here and there at a club or in the smoking room of a Pullman. He insisted, however, and so I launched forth upon a discourse in regard to the functions, duties and responsibilities of an American newspaper, as I imagined they would appear to the average American reader.

The chief duty of a managing editor, I said, was to give his readers an interesting paper, and as an angler baits his hook, not with what HE likes, but with what the fish like, so the style of the newspaper should be adjusted to what the managing editor judged to be the public appetite.

A sub-stratum of truth should run through the news columns; but since a million-dollar fire is more exciting than a half-million-dollar fire, since a thousand deaths in an earthquake are more exciting than a hundred, no nice scrupulosity need be observed in checking the insurance inspector's figures or in counting the dead. What the public wanted was a good "story," and provided it got that there would be little disposition in any quarter to censure an arithmetical generosity which had been invoked in the service of the public's well-known demands.

So far as politics were concerned, it seemed to me that any newspaper could afford the strongest support to its views while printing the truth and nothing but the truth, if it exercised some discretion as to printing the WHOLE truth. The editorial, I added, might be regarded as a habit rather than as a guiding force. People no longer looked to the editorial columns for the formation of their opinions. They formed their judgment from a large stock of facts, near-facts and nowhere near-facts, and then bought a paper for the purpose of comfortable reassurance. I had no doubt that a newspaper run to suit my own taste—a combination of The World's editorial page with The Evening Post's news and make-up— would lack the influence with which circulation alone can endow a paper, and would end in a bankruptcy highly creditable to its stockholders.

This somewhat cynical outburst brought down upon me an overwhelming torrent of protest from Mr. Pulitzer.

"My God!" he cried, "I would not have believed it possible that any one could show such a complete ignorance of American character, of the high sense of duty which in the main animates American journalism, of the foundations of integrity on which almost every successful paper in the United States has been founded. You do not know what it costs me to try and keep The World up to a high standard of accuracy—the money, the time, the thought, the praise, the blame, the constant watchfulness.

"I do not say that The World never makes a mistake in its news column; I wish I could say it. What I say is that there are not half a dozen papers in the United States which tamper with the news, which publish what they know to be false. But if I thought that I had done no better than that I would be ashamed to own a paper. It is not enough to refrain from publishing fake news, it is not enough to take ordinary care to avoid the mistakes which arise from the ignorance, the carelessness, the stupidity of one or more of the many men who handle the news before it gets into print; you have got to do much more than that; you have got to make every one connected with the paper—your editors, your reporters, your correspondents, your rewrite men, your proof-readers—believe that accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.

"When you go to New York ask any of the men in the dome to show you my instructions to them, my letters written from day to day, my cables; and you will see that accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, is the first, the most urgent, the most constant demand I have made on them.

"I do not say that The World is the only paper which takes extraordinary pains to be accurate; on the contrary, I think that almost every paper in America tries to be accurate. I will go further than that. There is not a paper of any importance published in French, German or English, whether it is printed in Europe or in America, which I have not studied for weeks or months, and some of them I have read steadily for a quarter of a century; and I tell you this, Mr. Ireland, after years of experience, after having comparisons made by the hundred, from time to time, of different versions of the same event, that the press of America as a whole has a higher standard of accuracy than the European press as a whole. I will go further than that. I will say that line for line the American newspapers actually ATTAIN a higher standard of news accuracy than the European newspapers; and I will go further than that and say that although there are in Europe a few newspapers, and they are chiefly English, which are as accurate as the best newspapers in America, there are no newspapers in America which are so habitually, so criminally stuffed with fake news as the worst of the European papers."

Mr. Pulitzer paused and asked me if there was a glass of water on the table—we were seated in his library—and after I had handed it to him and he had drained it nearly to the bottom at one gulp, he resumed his lecture. I give it in considerable detail, because it was the longest speech he ever addressed to me, because he subsequently made me write it out from memory and then read it to him, and because it was one of the few occasions during my intercourse with him on which I was persuaded beyond a doubt that he spoke with perfect frankness, without allowing his words to be influenced by any outside considerations.

"As a matter of fact," he continued, "the criticisms you hear about the American press are founded on a dislike for our headlines and for the prominence we give to crime, to corruption in office, and to sensational topics generally; the charge of inaccuracy is just thrown in to make it look worse. I do not believe that one person in a thousand who attacks the American press for being inaccurate has ever taken the trouble to investigate the facts.

"Now about this matter of sensationalism: a newspaper should be scrupulously accurate, it should be clean, it should avoid everything salacious or suggestive, everything that could offend good taste or lower the moral tone of its readers; but within these limits it is the duty of a newspaper to print the news. When I speak of good taste and of good moral tone I do not mean the kind of good taste which is offended by every reference to the unpleasant things of life, I do not mean the kind of morality which refuses to recognize the existence of immorality- -that type of moral hypocrite has done more to check the moral progress of humanity than all the immoral people put together—what I mean is the kind of good taste which demands that frankness should be linked with decency, the kind of moral tone which is braced and not relaxed when it is brought face to face with vice.

"Some people try and make you believe that a newspaper should not devote its space to long and dramatic accounts of murders, railroad wrecks, fires, lynchings, political corruption, embezzlements, frauds, graft, divorces, what you will. I tell you they are wrong, and I believe that if they thought the thing out they would see that they are wrong.

"We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on. There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

"Publicity may not be the only thing that is needed, but it is the one thing without which all other agencies will fail. If a newspaper is to be of real service to the public it must have a big circulation, first because its news and its comment must reach the largest possible number of people, second, because circulation means advertising, and advertising means money, and money means independence. If I caught any man on The World suppressing news because one of our advertisers objected to having it printed I would dismiss him immediately; I wouldn't care who he was.

"What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!"

Mr. Pulitzer made this confession of faith with the warmth generated by an unshakable faith. He spoke, as he always spoke when he was excited, with vigor, emphasis and ample gesture. When he came to an end and asked for another glass of water I found nothing to say. It would have been as impertinent of me to agree with him as to differ from him.

After all, I had to remember that he had taken over The World when its circulation was less than 15,000 copies a day; that he had been for thirty years and still was its dominating spirit and the final authority on every matter concerning its policy, its style, and its contents; that he had seen its morning circulation go up to well over 350,000 copies a day; that at times he had taken his stand boldly against popular clamor, as when he kept up for months a bitter attack against the American action in the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and at times had incurred the hostility of powerful moneyed interests, as when he forced the Cleveland administration to sell to the public on competitive bids a fifty- million-dollar bond issue which it had arranged to sell privately to a great banking house at much less than its market value.

Before leaving the subject of newspapers I may describe the method by which Mr. Pulitzer kept in touch with the news and put himself in the position to maintain a critical supervision over The World.

An elaborate organization was employed for this purpose. I will explain it as it worked when we were on the yacht, but the system was maintained at all times, whether we were cruising, or were at Cap Martin, at Bar Harbor, at Wiesbaden, or elsewhere, merely a few minor details being changed to meet local conditions.

In the Pulitzer Building, Park Row, New York, there were collected each day several copies of each of the morning papers, including The World, and some of the evening papers. These were mailed daily to Mr. Pulitzer according to cabled instructions as to our whereabouts. In addition to this a gentleman connected with The World, who had long experience of Mr. Pulitzer's requirements, cut from all the New York papers and from a number of other papers from every part of the United States every article that he considered Mr. Pulitzer ought to see, whether because of its subject, its tenor, or its style. These clippings were mailed by the hundred on almost every fast steamer sailing for Europe. In order that there might be the greatest economy of time in reading them, the essential matter in each clipping was marked.

So far as The World was concerned a copy of each issue was sent, with the names of the writers written across each editorial, big news story, or special article.

As we went from port to port we got the principal French, German, Austrian and Italian papers, and The World bureau in London kept us supplied with the English dailies and weeklies.

Whenever we picked up a batch of American papers, each of the secretaries got a set and immediately began to read it. My own method of reading was adopted after much advice from Mr. Pulitzer and after consultation with the more experienced members of the staff, and I do not suppose it differed materially from that followed by the others.

I read The World first, going over the "big" stories carefully and with enough concentration to give me a very fair idea of the facts. Then I read the articles in the other papers covering the same ground, noting any important differences in the various accounts. This task resolved itself in practice into mastering in considerable detail about half a dozen articles—a political situation, a murder, a railroad wreck, a fire, a strike, an important address by a college president, for example—and getting a clear impression of the treatment of each item in each paper.

With this done, and with a few notes scribbled on a card to help my memory, I turned to the editorial pages, reading each editorial with the closest attention, and making more notes.

The final reading of the news served to give me from ten to twenty small topics of what Mr. Pulitzer called "human interest," to be used as subjects of conversation as occasion demanded. As a rule, I cut these items out of the paper and put them in the left-hand pocket of my coat, for when we walked together J. P. always took my right arm, and my left hand was therefore free to dip into my reservoir of cuttings whenever conversation flagged and I needed a new subject.

The cuttings covered every imaginable topic—small cases in the magistrates' courts, eccentric entertainments at Newport, the deaths of centenarians, dinners to visiting authors in New York, accounts of performing animals, infant prodigies, new inventions, additions to the Metropolitan Museum, announcements of new plays, anecdotes about prominent men and women, instances of foolish extravagance among the rich, and so on.

Something of the kind was done by each of us, so that when Mr. Pulitzer appeared on deck after breakfast we all had something ready for him. The first man called usually had the easiest time, for Mr. Pulitzer's mind was fresh and keen for news after a night's rest. The men who went to him later in the morning suffered from two disadvantages, one that they did not know what news or how much of it J. P. had already received, the other that as the day advanced Mr. Pulitzer often grew tired, and his attention then became difficult to hold.

I remember that on one occasion when he had complained of feeling utterly tired out mentally I asked him if he would like me to stop talking. "No, no," he replied at once; "never stop talking or reading, I must have something to occupy my mind all the time, however exhausted I am."

This peculiarity of being unable to get any repose by the road of silent abstraction must have been a source of acute suffering to him. It is difficult to imagine a more terrible condition of mind than that in which the constant flogging of a tired brain is the only anodyne for its morbid irritability.

My own experience of a morning on the yacht, when Mr. Pulitzer's nerves had been soothed by a good night's sleep, was that he walked up and down the long promenade deck and got from me a brief summary of the news.

From time to time he pulled out his watch and, holding it toward me, asked what o'clock it was. He was always most particular to know exactly how long he had walked. We had arguments on many occasions as to the exact moment at which we had commenced our promenade, and we would go carefully over the facts—Mr. Craven had been walking with him from 9.30 to 10.05, then Dunningham had been in the library with him for fifteen minutes, then Mr. Thwaites had walked with him for ten minutes, taking notes for a letter to be written to the managing editor of The World; well, that made it 10.30 when I joined him; but fifteen minutes had to be taken out of the hour for the time he'd spent in the library, that made three-quarters of an hour he'd been actually walking, well, we'd walk for another fifteen minutes and round out the hour.

Often when the appointed moment came to stop walking Mr. Pulitzer felt able to go on, and he would then either say frankly, "Let's have fifteen minutes more," or he would achieve the same end by reopening the discussion as to just how long he had walked, and keep on walking until he began to feel tired, when he would say: "I dare say you are quite right, well, now we will sit down and go over the papers."

The question of where Mr. Pulitzer was to sit on deck was not a simple one to decide. He always wanted as much air as he could get; but as he suffered a good deal of pain in his right eye, the one which had been operated on, and as this was either started or made worse by exposure to wind, a spot had to be found which had just the right amount of air current. Five minutes might show, however, that there was a little too much wind, when we would move to a more sheltered spot, or he might think we'd been too cautious and that he could sit in a breezier spot, or, after we had found the ideal place, the wind might change, and then we had to move again.

Settled in a large cane armchair with a leather seat, a heavy rug over his knees if the weather was at all chilly, Mr. Pulitzer took up the serious consideration of the news which had been lightly skimmed over during his walk.

An item was selected, and the account in The World was read aloud. Then followed the discussion of it from the standpoint of its presentation in the various papers. On what page was it printed in The World, in what column, how much space did it fill, how much was devoted to headlines, what was the size of the type, was the type varied in parts to give emphasis to the more striking features of the story, what were the cross-heads in the body of the article, were any boxes used, if so, what was put in them, what about the illustrations? And so on for each important item in each paper.

One of the by-products of this reading of the papers was a stream of cables, letters and memoranda to various members of The World staff in New York. None of these were ever sent through me, but it was a common thing for J. P. to say: "Have you got your writing pad with you? Just make a note: Indianapolis story excellent, insufficient details lynching, who wrote City Hall story? and give it to Thwaites and tell him to remind me of it this afternoon."

Mr. Pulitzer would take the matter up with Thwaites, and would send such praise, blame, reward, criticism, or suggestion as the occasion demanded.

From time to time I was called upon to make a report on the day's papers, a task which usually fell to some more experienced member of the staff. My reports always covered the Sunday issues. They included an analysis of The Sun, The Herald, The American, The Times, The Tribune and The World, showing the number of columns of advertising, of news, and of special articles, a classification of the telegrams according to geographical distribution—how much from France, from Germany, from England, from the Western States, from the Southern States, and so on; a classification of the special articles on the basis of their topics— medicine, sport, fashions, humor, adventure, children's interests, women's interests.

This was by no means the only check which Mr. Pulitzer kept upon The World and its contemporaries. He received regularly from New York a statistical return showing, for The World and its two principal competitors, the monthly and yearly figures for circulation and advertising; and the advertising return showed not only the amount of space occupied by advertising in each paper, but also the number of advertisements each month under various heads, such as display advertising, want ads., real estate, dry goods, amusements, hotels, transportation, to let ads., summer resorts, and whatever other classes of advertising might appear.

Whatever Mr. Pulitzer wished to do in the way of business, whether it concerned the direction of the policy of The World, or the dictating of an editorial, or the handling of correspondence, was almost always done in the morning, and by lunch time he was ready to turn his attention to something light or amusing, or to serious subjects not connected with current events.

Mr. Pulitzer generally lunched and dined with the staff in the dining saloon, unless he felt more than usually ill or nervous, when he had his meals served in the library, one or at most two of us keeping him company.

When he sat with us he occupied the head of the table. At his side stood the butler, who never attended to any one but his master. A stranger at the table, if he were not actually sitting next to J. P., might very well have failed to notice that his host was blind, so far as any indication of blindness was afforded by the way he ate. His food was, of course, cut up at a side table, but it was placed before him on an ordinary plate, without any raised edge or other device to save it from being pushed on to the tablecloth.

As soon as he was seated J. P. put his fingers lightly on the table in front of him and fixed the exact position of his plate, fork, spoon, water glass and wine glass. While he was doing this he generally spoke a few words to one or another of us, and as he always turned his face in the direction of the person he was addressing, the delicate movements of his hands, even if they were observed, were only those of a man with his sight under similar circumstances.

Sitting next to him, however, his blindness soon became apparent. As he began to eat he simply impaled each portion of food on his fork, but after he had got halfway through a course and the remaining morsels were scattered here and there on his plate, he explored the surface with the utmost niceness of touch until he felt a slight resistance. He had then located a morsel, but in order that he might avoid an accident in transferring it to his mouth he felt the object carefully all over with almost imperceptible touches of his fork, and, having found the thickest or firmest part of it secured it safely.

At times, if he became particularly interested in the conversation, he put his fork down, and when he picked it up again he was in difficulties for a moment or two, having lost track of the food remaining on his plate. On these occasions the ever-watchful butler would either place the food with a fork in the track of J. P.'s systematic exploration, or guide Mr. Pulitzer's hand to the right spot.

Like many people in broken health Mr. Pulitzer had a very variable appetite. Sometimes nothing could tempt his palate, sometimes he ate voraciously; but at all times the greatest care had to be exercised in regard to his diet. Not only did he suffer constantly from acute dyspepsia, but also from diabetes, which varied in sympathy with his general state of health.

He took very little alcohol, and that only in the form of light wines, such as claret or hock, seldom more than a single small glass at lunch and at dinner. Whenever he found a vintage which specially appealed to him he would tell the butler to send a case or two to some old friend in America, to some member of his family or to one of the staff of The World.

After lunch Mr. Pulitzer always retired to his cabin for a siesta. I use the word siesta, but as a matter of fact it is quite inadequate to describe the peculiar function for which I have chosen it as a label. What took place on these occasions was this: Mr. Pulitzer lay down on his bed, sometimes in pyjamas, but more often with only his coat and boots removed, and one of the secretaries, usually the German secretary, sat down in an armchair at the bedside with a pile of books at his elbow.

At a word from Mr. Pulitzer the secretary began to read in a clear, incisive voice some historical work, novel or play. After a few minutes Mr. Pulitzer would say "Softly," and the secretary's voice was lowered until, though it was still audible, it assumed a monotonous and soothing quality. After a while the order came, "Quite softly." At this point the reader ceased to form his words and commenced to murmur indistinctly, giving an effect such as might be produced by a person reading aloud in an adjoining room, but with the connecting door closed.

If, after ten minutes of this murmuring, J. P. remained motionless it was to be assumed that he was asleep; and the secretary's duty was to go on murmuring until Mr. Pulitzer awoke and told him to stop or to commence actual reading again. This murmuring might last for two hours, and it was a very difficult art to acquire, for at the slightest change in the pitch of the voice, at a sneeze, or a cough, Mr. Pulitzer would wake with a start, and an unpleasant quarter of an hour followed.

This murmuring was not, however, without its consolations to the murmurer, for as soon as the actual reading stopped he could take up a novel or magazine and, leaving his vocal organs to carry on the work, concentrate his mind upon the preparation of material against some future session.

The siesta over, the afternoon was taken up with much the same kind of work as had filled the morning. By six o'clock Mr. Pulitzer was ready to sit in the library for an hour before he dressed for dinner. This time was generally devoted to novels, plays and light literature of various kinds. J. P. often assured me that no man had ever been able to read a novel or a play to him satisfactorily without having first gone over it carefully at least twice; and on more than one occasion I was furnished with very good evidence that even this double preparation was not always a guarantee of success.

There appeared to be two ways of getting Mr. Pulitzer interested in a novel or play. One, and this, I believe, was the most successful, was to draw a striking picture of the scene where the climax is reached—the wife crouching in the corner, the husband revolver in hand, the Tertium Quid calmly offering to read the documents which prove that he and not the gentleman with the revolver is really the husband of the lady—and then to go back to the beginning and explain how it all came about.

The other method was to set forth the appearance and disposition of each of the characters in the story, so that they assumed reality in Mr. Pulitzer's mind, then to condense the narrative up to about page two hundred and sixty, and then begin to read from the book. If in the course of the next three minutes you were not asked in a tone of utter weariness, "My God! Is there much more of this?" there was a reasonable chance that you might be allowed to read from the print a fifth or possibly a fourth of what you had not summarized.

Dinner on the yacht passed in much the same way as lunch, except that serious subjects and especially politics were taboo.

The meal hours were really the most trying experiences of the day. Each of us went to the table with several topics of conversation carefully prepared, with our pockets full of newspaper cuttings, notes and even small reference books for dates and biographies.

But there was seldom any conversation in the proper sense; that is to say, we were hardly ever able to start a subject going and pass it from one to the other with a running comment or amplification, partly because any expression of opinion, except when he, J. P., asked for it, usually bored him to extinction, and partly because the first statement of any striking fact generally inspired Mr. Pulitzer to undertake a searching cross-examination of the speaker into every detail of the matter brought forward, and in regard to every ramification of the subject.

I may relate an amusing instance of this: A gentleman who had been on the staff, but had been absent through illness, joined us at Mentone for a cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean. At dinner the first night out he incautiously mentioned that during the two months of his convalescence he had taken the opportunity of reading the whole of Shakespeare's plays.

Too late he realized his mistake. Mr. Pulitzer took the matter up, and for the next hour and a half we listened to the unfortunate ex-invalid while he gave a list of the principal characters in each of the historical plays, in each of the tragedies, and in each of the comedies, followed by an outline of each plot, a description of a scene here and there, and an occasional quotation from the text.

At the end of this heroic exploit, which was helped out now and then by a note from one of the rest of us, scribbled hastily on a card and handed silently to the victim, Mr. Pulitzer merely said, "Well, go on, go on, didn't you read the sonnets?" But this was too much for our gravity, and in a ripple of laughter the sitting was brought to a close.

The trouble with the meals, however, was not only that we were all kept at a very high strain of alertness and attention, singularly inconducive to the enjoyment of food or to the sober business of digestion, but that they were of such interminable length. The plain fact was that by utilizing almost every moment between eight o'clock in the morning and nine o'clock at night we could fortify ourselves with enough material to fill in the hour or two spent with Mr. Pulitzer, hours during which we had to supply an incessant stream of information, or run through a carefully condensed novel or play.

Under such circumstances an hour for lunch or dinner had to be accepted as an unfortunate necessity; but when it came, as it often did, to an hour and a half or two hours, the encroachment on our time became a serious matter.

At about nine o'clock Mr. Pulitzer went to the library. One of the secretaries accompanied him and read aloud until, on the stroke of ten, Dunningham came and announced that it was bedtime.

An extraordinary, and in some respects a most annoying feature of this final task of the day, viewed from the secretary's standpoint, was that from nine to ten, almost without cessation, Mr. Mann, the German secretary, played the piano in the dining saloon, the doors communicating with the library being left open.

In a direct line the piano cannot have been more than ten feet from the reader's chair; and the strain of reading aloud for an hour against a powerful rendering of the most vigorous compositions of Liszt, Wagner, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin was a most trying ordeal for voice, brain and nerves. Mr. Pulitzer could apparently enjoy the music and the reading at the same time. Often, when something was played of which he knew the air, he would follow the notes by means of a sort of subdued whistle, beating time with his hand; but this did not take his mind off the reading, and if you allowed your attention to wander for a moment and failed to read with proper emphasis he would say: "Please read that last passage over again, and do try and read it distinctly."

Such was the routine of life on the yacht. It was little affected by our occasional visits to Naples, Ajaccio and other ports. Some one always landed to inquire for mail and to procure newspapers, one or two of us got shore leave for a few hours, but so far as I was concerned, being still in strict training and under close observation, my rare landings were made only for the purpose of having my observation and memory tested.

I brought back minute descriptions of Napoleon's birthplace at Ajaccio, of his villa in Elba, of the tapestries, pictures and statues in the National Museum at Naples, of the Acropolis, of the monument of Lysicrates, of the Greek Theater and of the Roman Amphitheater at Syracuse, and of whatever else I was directed to observe.

Mr. Pulitzer had had these things described to him a score of times. He knew which block of seats in the Greek theater at Neapolis bore the inscription of Nereis, daughter-in-law of King Heiro the Second; he knew up what stairs and through what rooms and passages you had to go to see the marble bath in Napoleon's villa near Portoferraio; he knew from precisely what part of the Acropolis the yacht was visible when it was at anchor at the Piraeus; he knew the actual place of the more important pictures on the walls of each room of the Naples Museum—such a one to the right, such a one to the left as you entered—he knew practically everything, but specially he knew the thing you had forgotten.

My exhibitions of memory always ended, as they were no doubt intended to end, in a confession of ignorance. If I described five pictures, Mr. Pulitzer said: "Go on"; when I had described ten, he said: "Go on"; when I had described fifteen he said: "Go on"; and this was kept up until I could go on no more. At this point Mr. Pulitzer had discovered just what he wanted to know—how much I could see in a given time, and how much of it I could remember with a fair degree of accuracy. It was simply the game of the jewels which Lurgan Sahib played with Kim, against a different background but with much the same object.

In the foregoing description of Mr. Pulitzer's daily life it has been made abundantly clear that his secretaries were worked to the limit of their endurance. It remains to add that Mr. Pulitzer never made a demand upon us which was greater than the demand he made upon himself.

He was a tremendous worker; and in receiving our reports no vital fact ever escaped him. If we missed one he immediately "sensed" it, and his untiring cross-examination clung to the trail until he unearthed it.

We had youth, health and numbers on our side, yet this man, aged by suffering, tormented by ill-health, loaded with responsibility, kept pace with our united labors, and in the final analysis gave more than he received.

We brought a thousand offerings to his judgment; many of them he rejected with an impatient cry of "Next! Next! For God's sake!" But if any subject, whether from its intrinsic importance or from its style, reached the standard of his discrimination he took it up, enlarged upon it, illuminated it, until what had come to him as crude material for conversation assumed a new form, everything unessential rejected, everything essential disclosed in the clear and vigorous English which was the vehicle of his lucid thought.

When I recall the capaciousness of his understanding, the breadth of his experience, the range of his information, and set them side by side with the cruel limitations imposed upon him by his blindness and by his shattered constitution, I forget the severity of his discipline, I marvel only that his self-control should have served him so well in the tedious business of breaking a new man to his service.



CHAPTER V

GETTING TO KNOW MR. PULITZER

As time passed, my relations with Mr. Pulitzer became more agreeable. He had given me fair warning that the first few weeks of my trial would be more or less unpleasant; a month at Cap Martin and a month on the yacht had amply verified his prediction.

But this period of probation, laborious and nerve-racking as it was, enabled me to appreciate how important it was for J. P. to put to a severe test of ability, tact and good temper any one whom he intended to attach to his personal staff.

His total blindness placed him completely in the hands of those around him, and, in order that he might enjoy that sense of perfect security without which his life would have been intolerable, it was necessary that he should be able to repose absolute confidence in the loyalty and intelligence of his companions.

It was not with reference to his blindness alone that the qualifications of his secretaries were measured. Indeed, to the loss of his sight he had become, in some measure, reconciled; what really dominated every other consideration was the need of being able to meet the peculiar conditions which had arisen through the complete breakdown of his nervous system.

I have spoken of his extreme sensitiveness to noise. It is impossible to give any description of this terrible symptom which shall be in any way adequate. Many of us suffer torment through the hideous clamor which appears to be inseparable from modern civilization; but to Mr. Pulitzer even the sudden click of a spoon against a saucer, the gurgle of water poured into a glass, the striking of a match, produced a spasm of suffering. I have seen him turn pale, tremble, break into a cold perspiration at some sound which to most people would have been scarcely audible.

When we were on the yacht every one was compelled to wear rubber-soled shoes. When Mr. Pulitzer was asleep that portion of the deck which was over his bedroom was roped off so that no one could walk over his head; and each door which gave access to the rooms above his cabin was provided with a brass plate on which was cut the legend: "This door must not be opened when Mr. Pulitzer is asleep."

With every resource at his command which ingenuity could suggest and money procure, the one great unsolved problem of his later years was to obtain absolute quietness at all times. At his magnificent house in New York, at his beautiful country home at Bar Harbor he had spent tens of thousands of dollars in a vain effort to procure the one luxury which he prized above all others. On the yacht the conditions in this respect were as nearly perfect as possible; but some noise was inseparable from the ship's work—letting go the anchor, heaving it up again, blowing the foghorn, and so on—though most of the ordinary noises had been eliminated.

As an instance of the constant care which was taken to save Mr. Pulitzer from noise I remember that for some days almonds were served with our dessert at dinner, but that they suddenly ceased to form part of our menu. Being fond of almonds, I asked the chief steward why they had stopped serving them. After a little hesitation he said that it had been done at the suggestion of the butler, who had noticed that I broke the almonds in half before I ate them and that the noise made by their snapping was very disagreeable to Mr. Pulitzer.

With the best intentions in the world, our meals were now and then disturbed by noise. A knife suddenly slipped with a loud click against a plate, a waiter dropped a spoon on a silver tray, or some one knocked over a glass. We were all in such a state of nervous tension that whenever one of these little accidents occurred we jumped in our chairs as though a pistol had been fired, and looked at J. P. with horrified expectancy.

There could be no doubt whatever as to the effect these noises had upon him. He winced as a dog winces when you crack a whip over him; the only question was whether by a powerful effort he could regain his composure or whether his suffering would overcome his self-restraint to the extent of making him gloomy or querulous during the rest of the meal.

The effect by no means ceased when we rose from table. If by bad luck two or three noises occurred at dinner—and our excessive anxiety in the matter was sometimes our undoing—Mr. Pulitzer was so upset that he would pass a sleepless night. This in its turn meant a day during which his tortured body made itself master of his mind, and plunged him into a state of profound dejection.

Like most people who suffer acutely from noise Mr. Pulitzer was very differently affected by different kinds of noise. To any noise which was necessary, such as that caused by letting go the anchor, he could make himself indifferent; but very few noises were included in this category.

What caused him the most acute suffering was a noise which, while it inflicted pain upon him, neither gave pleasure to any one else nor achieved a useful purpose. Loud talking, whistling, slamming doors, carelessness in handling things, the barking of dogs, the "kick" of motor boats, these were the noises which made his existence miserable.

At the back of his physical reaction was a mental reaction which intensified every shock to his nerves. He complained, and with justice, that, leaving out of consideration an occasional noise which was purely the result of accident, his life was made a burden by the utter indifference of the majority of human beings to the rights of others. What right, he asked, had any one to run a motor boat with a machine so noisy that it destroyed the peace of a whole harbor? Above all, what right had such a person to come miles out to sea and cruise around the yacht, merely to gratify idle curiosity?

He applied the same test to people who shout at one another in the streets, who whistle at the top of their lungs, or leave doors to slam in the faces of those behind them.

His resentment against these practices was made the more bitter by the knowledge that he was absolutely helpless in the matter whenever he came within hearing distance of an ill-bred person.

There was yet another element in this which added to his misery. He said to me once, when we had been driven off the plage at Mentone by two American tourists of the worst type, who at a hundred yards' distance from each other were yelling their views as to which hotel they proposed to meet at for lunch, "I can never forget that when I was a young man in the full vigor of my health I used to regard other people's complaints about noise as being merely an affectation. I would even make a noise deliberately in order to annoy any one who forced the absurd pretense upon my notice. Well, Mr. Ireland, I swear my punishment has been heavy enough."

To revert, however, to Mr. Pulitzer's dependence on those around him, it must be remembered that nothing could reach him except through the medium of speech. The state of his bank account, the condition of his investments, the reports about The World, his business correspondence, the daily news in which he was so deeply interested, everything upon which he based his relation with the affairs of life he had to accept at second hand.

It might be supposed that under these circumstances Mr. Pulitzer was easily deceived, that when there was no evil intention, for instance, but simply a desire to spare him annoyance, the exercise of a little ingenuity could shield him from anything likely to wound his feelings or excite his anger. As a matter of fact I have never known a man upon whom it would not have been easier to practice a deception. His blindness, so far from being a hindrance to him in reaching the truth, was an aid.

Two instances will serve to illustrate the point. Suppose that I found in the morning paper an article which I thought would stir J. P. up and spoil his day: when I was called to read to him I had no means of knowing whether the man whom I replaced had taken the same view as myself and had skipped the article or whether he had, deliberately or inadvertently, read it to him. The same argument applied to the man who was to follow me. If I read the article to him I might find out later that my predecessor had omitted it, or, if I omitted it, that my successor had read it.

In either event one of us would be in the wrong; and it was impossible to tell in advance whether the man who read it would be blamed for lack of discretion or praised for his good judgment, as everything depended upon the exact mood in which Mr. Pulitzer happened to be.

It was an awkward dilemma for the secretary, for, if he did not read it and another man did, Mr. Pulitzer might very well interpret the first man's caution as an effort to hoodwink him, or the second man's boldness as an exhibition of indifference to his feelings, or, what was more likely still, fasten one fault upon one man and the other upon the other.

The same problem presented itself from a different direction. Often, Mr. Pulitzer would take out of his pocket a bundle of papers—newspaper clippings, letters, statistical reports, and memoranda of various kinds. Handing them to his companion he would say:

"Look through these and see if there is a letter with the London post mark, and a sheet of blue paper with some figures on it."

You could never tell what was behind these inquiries. Sometimes he was content to know that the papers were there, sometimes he asked you to read them, and as he might very well have them read to him by several people during the day he had a perfect check on all printed or written matter once it was in his hands.

In addition to all this his exquisite sense of hearing enabled him to detect the slightest variation in your tone of voice. If you hesitated or betrayed the least uneasiness his suspicions were at once aroused and he took steps to verify from other sources any statement you made under such circumstances.

It will be readily understood that with his keen and analytic mind Mr. Pulitzer very soon discovered exactly what kind of work was best suited to the capacities of each of his secretaries. Thus to Mr. Paterson was assigned the reading of history and biography, to Mr. Pollard, a Harvard man and the only American on the personal staff during my time, novels and plays in French and English, to Herr Mann German literature of all kinds. Thwaites was chiefly occupied with Mr. Pulitzer's correspondence, and Craven with the yacht accounts, though they, as well as myself, had roving commissions covering the periodical literature of France, Germany, England, and America.

This division of our reading was by no means rigid; it represented Mr. Pulitzer's view of our respective spheres of greatest utility; but it was often disturbed by one or another of us going on sick leave or falling a victim to the weather when we were at sea.

Subject to such chances Pollard always read to Mr. Pulitzer during his breakfast hour, and Mann during his siesta, while the reading after dinner was pretty evenly divided between Pollard, Paterson, and myself.

If Mr. Pulitzer once got it into his head that a particular man was better than any one else for a particular class of work nothing could reconcile him to that man's absence when such work was to be done.

An amusing instance of this occurred on an occasion when Pollard was sea-sick and could not read to J. P. at breakfast. I was hurriedly summoned to take his place. I was dumbfounded, for I had never before been called upon for this task, and Mr. Pulitzer had often held it up to me as the last test of fitness, the charter of your graduation. I had nothing whatever prepared of the kind which J. P. required at that time, and I knew that upon the success of his breakfast might very well depend the general complexion of his whole day.

In desperation I rushed into Pollard's cabin, and its unhappy occupant, with a generosity which even seasickness could not chill, gave me a bundle of Spectators, Athenaeums, and Literary Digests, with pencil marks in the margins indicating exactly what he had intended to read in the ordinary course of things. I breathed a sigh of relief and hastened to the library, where I found J. P. very nervous and out of sorts after a bad night.

He immediately began to deplore Pollard's absence, on the ground that it was impossible for anyone to know what to read to him at breakfast without years of experience and training. I said nothing, feeling secure with Pollard's prepared "breakfast food," as we called it, in front of me. I awaited only his signal to begin reading, confident that I could win laurels for myself without robbing Pollard, whose wreath was firmly fixed on his brow.

Alas for my hopes! My very first sentence destroyed my chances, for I had the misfortune to begin reading something which he had already heard. Nothing annoyed him more than this; and we all made a habit of writing "Dead" across any article in a periodical as soon as J. P. had had it, so that we could keep off each other's trails. I am willing to believe that this was the first and only time that Pollard ever forgot to kill an article after he had read it, but it was enough, in the deplorable state of Mr. Pulitzer's nerves that morning, to inflict a wound upon my reputation as a breakfast-time reader which months did not suffice to heal.

With such a bad start Mr. Pulitzer immediately concluded that I was useless, and he worked himself up into such a state about it that passage after passage, carefully marked by Pollard, was greeted with,

"Stop! Stop! For God's sake!" or,

"Next! Next!" or,

"My God! Is there much more of that?" or,

"Well, Mr. Ireland, isn't there ANYTHING interesting in all those papers?"

I bore up manfully against this until he made the one remark I could not stand.

"Now, Mr. Ireland," he said, his voice taking on a tone of gentle reproach, "I know you've done your best, but it is very bad. If you don't believe me, just take those papers to Mr. Pollard when he feels better; don't disturb him now when he's ill; and show him what you read to me. Now, just for fun, I'd like you to do that. He will tell you that there is not a single line which you have read that he would have read had he been in your place. I hope I haven't been too severe with you; but I hold up my hands and swear that Mr. Pollard wouldn't have read me a line of that rubbish."

This was too much! Carefully controlling my voice so that no trace of malice should be detected in it, I replied:

"I took these papers off Mr. Pollard's table a moment before I came to you, and the parts I have read are the parts he had marked, with the intention of reading them to you himself."

I thought I had J. P. cornered. It was before I learned that there was no such thing as cornering J. P.

Leaning toward me, and putting a hand on my shoulder, he said:

"Now, boy, don't be put out about this. I do believe, honestly, that you did your best; but you should not make excuses. When you are wrong, admit it, and try and benefit by my advice. You will find a very natural explanation of your mistake. Perhaps the passages Mr. Pollard marked were the ones he did NOT intend to read to me, or perhaps you took the wrong set of papers; some perfectly natural explanation I am sure."

That night at dinner, when I was still smarting under the sense of injustice born of my morning's experience, J. P. gave me an opening which I could not allow to pass unused.

Turning to me during a pause in the conversation, he asked:

"And what have YOU been doing this afternoon, Mr. Ireland?"

A happy inspiration flashed across my mind, and I replied:

"I've been making a rough draft of a play, sir."

"Well, my God! I didn't know you wrote plays."

"Very seldom, at any rate; but I had an idea this morning that I couldn't resist."

"What is it to be called?" inquired J. P.

"'The Importance of being Pollard,'" I answered, whereupon J. P. and everyone else at the table had a good laugh. They had all been through a breakfast with J. P. when Pollard was away, and could sympathize with my feelings.

Mr. Pulitzer was very sensible of the difficulties which lay in everybody's path at the times when lack of sleep or a prolonged attack of pain had made him excessively irritable; and when he had recovered from one of these periods of strain, and was conscious of having been rough in his manner, he often took occasion to make amends.

Sometimes he would do this when we were at table, adopting a humorous tone as he said, "I'm afraid so-and-so will never forgive me for the way I treated him this afternoon; but I want to say that he really read me an excellent story and read it very well, and that I am grateful to him. I was feeling wretchedly ill and had a frightful headache, and if I said anything that hurt his feelings I apologize."

Once, during my weeks of probation, when J. P. felt that he had carried his test of my good temper beyond reason, he stopped suddenly in our walk, laid a hand on my shoulder, and asked:

"What do you feel when I am unreasonable with you? Do you feel angry? Do you bear malice?"

"Not at all," I replied. "I suppose my feeling is very much like that of a nurse for a patient. I realize that you are suffering and that you are not to be held responsible for what you do at such times."

"I thank you for that, Mr. Ireland," he replied. "You never said anything which pleased me more. Never forget that I am blind, and that I am in pain most of the time."

A matter which I had reason to notice at a very early stage of my acquaintance with Mr. Pulitzer was that when he was in a bad mood it was the worst possible policy to offer no resistance to his pressure. It was part of his nature to go forward in any direction until he encountered an obstacle. When he reached one he paused before making up his mind whether he would go through it or round it. The further he went the more interested he became, his purpose always being to discover a boundary, whether of your knowledge, of your patience, of your memory, or of your nervous endurance.

He never respected a man who did not at some point stand up and resist him. After the line had once been drawn at that point, and his curiosity had been gratified, he was always careful not to approach it too closely; and it was only on the rare occasions when he was in exceptionally bad condition that any clash occurred after the first one had been settled.

I put off my own little fight for a long time, partly because I was very much affected by the sight of his wretchedness, and partly because I did not at first realize how necessary it was for him to find out just how far my self-control could be depended upon. As soon as this became clear to me I determined to seize the first favorable opportunity which presented itself of getting into my intrenchments and firing a blank cartridge or two.

It was after I had been with him about a month that my chance came. I had noticed that his manner toward me was slowly but steadily growing more hostile, and I had been expecting daily to receive my dismissal from the courteous hands of Dunningham, or to find myself unable to go further with the ordeal.

Finally, I consulted Dunningham, and was informed by him, to my great surprise, that I was doing very well and that Mr. Pulitzer was pleased with me. This information cleared the ground in front of me, and that afternoon when I was called to walk with Mr. Pulitzer I decided to put out a danger signal if I was hard pressed.

Everything favored such a course. J. P. had enjoyed a good siesta and was feeling unusually well; if, therefore, he was very disagreeable I would know that it was from design and not from an attack of nerves. Furthermore, he selected a subject of conversation in regard to which I was as well, if not better, informed than he was—a question relating to British Colonial policy.

The moment I began to speak I saw that his object was to drive me to the wall. He flatly contradicted me again and again, insinuated that I had never met certain statesmen whose words I repeated, and, finally, after I had concluded my arguments in support of the view I was advancing, he said in an angry tone, assumed for the occasion, of course:

"Mr. Ireland, I am really distressed that we should have had this discussion. I had hoped that, with years of training and advice, I might hare been able to make something out of you; but any man who could seriously hold the opinion you have expressed, and could attempt to justify it with the mass of inaccuracies and absurdities that you have given me, is simply a damned fool."

"I am sorry you said that, Mr. Pulitzer," I replied in a very serious voice.

"Why, for God's sake, you don't mind my calling you a damned fool, do you?"

"Not in the least, sir. But when you call me a damned fool you shatter an ideal I held about you."

"What's that? An ideal about me? What do you mean?"

"Well, sir, years before I met you I had heard that if there was one thing above all others which distinguished you from all other journalists it was that you had the keenest nose for news of any man living."

"What has that to do with my calling you a damned fool?"

"Simply this, that the fact that I'm a damned fool hasn't been news to me any time during the past twenty years."

He saw the point at once, laughed heartily and, putting an arm round my shoulders, as was his habit with all of us when he wished to show a friendly feeling or take the edge off a severe rebuke, said:

"Now, boy, you're making fun of me, and you must not make fun of a poor old blind man. Now, then, I take it all back; I shouldn't have called you a damned fool."

It was from this moment that my relations with Mr. Pulitzer began to improve.

A few days after the incident which I have just related we dropped anchor in the Bay of Naples, and Mr. Pulitzer announced his intention of sailing for New York by a White Star boat the following afternoon. He asked me to go with him; and I accepted this invitation as the sign that my period of probation was over.

Everything was prepared for our departure. Dunningham worked indefatigably. He went aboard the White Star boat, arranged for the accommodation of our party, had partitions knocked down so that Mr. Pulitzer could have a private diningroom and a library, and convoyed aboard twenty or thirty trunks and cases containing books, mineral waters, wines, cigars, fruit, special articles of diet, clothes, fur coats, rugs, etc., for J. P.

We all packed our belongings, telegraphed to our friends, sent ashore for the latest issues of the magazines, and sat around in deck chairs waiting for the word to follow our things aboard the liner.

After half an hour of suspense Dunningham came out of the library, where he had been in consultation with J. P., and as he advanced toward us we rose and made our way to the gangway, where one of the launches was swinging to her painter.

Dunningham, smiling and imperturbable as ever, raised his hand and said, "No, gentlemen, Mr. Pulitzer has changed his mind; we are not going to America. We remain on the yacht and sail this afternoon for Athens."

He disappeared over the side, and an hour or two later returned with the chef and the butler and one of the saloon stewards, who had gone aboard the liner to make things ready, and some tons of baggage.

We sailed just as the White Star boat cleared the end of the mole. When she passed us, within a hundred yards, she dipped her flag. I was walking with Mr. Pulitzer at the time and mentioned the exchange of salutes. He was silent for a few minutes. Then he asked, "Has she passed us?" "Yes," I replied, "she's half-a-mile ahead of us now." "Have you got your pad with you? Just make a note to ask Thwaites to cable to New York from the next port we call at and tell someone to send two hundred of the best Havana cigars to the captain. That man has some sense. Most captains would have blown their damned whistle when they dipped their flag. Have a note written to the captain telling him that I appreciated his consideration."

Our voyage to Athens and thence, through the Corinth Canal, back to Mentone, was free from incident. J. P. discussed the possibility of going to Constantinople or to Venice, but our cabled inquiries about the weather brought discouraging replies describing an unusually cold season, and these projects were abandoned.

About this time Mr. Pulitzer's health showed a marked improvement, which was reflected in the most agreeable manner in the general conditions of life on the yacht. He had been worried for some weeks about his plans for going to New York, and this had interfered with his sleep, had increased his nervousness and aggravated every symptom of his physical weakness. With this matter finally disposed of he could look forward to a peaceful cruise, during which he would be able to catch up with his careful reading of the marked file of The World, and thus remove a weight from his mind.

He detested having work accumulate on his hands, but when his health was worse than usual this was unavoidable. He always drove himself to the last ounce of his endurance, and it was only when his condition indicated an imminent collapse that he would consent to drop everything except light reading, and to spend a few days out at sea without calling anywhere for letters, papers, or cables.

It was during this, our last, cruise in the Mediterranean that I discovered that Mr. Pulitzer was one of the best and most fascinating talkers I had ever heard. Once in a while, when he was feeling cheerful after a good night's rest and a pleasant day's reading, he monopolized the conversation at lunch or dinner. He was generally more willing to talk when we took our meals at a large round table on deck, for he loved the sea breeze and was soothed by it.

When he talked he simply compelled your attention. I often felt that, if he had not made his career otherwise, he might have been one of the world's greatest actors, or one of its most popular orators. In flexibility of tone, in variety of gesture, in the change of his facial expression he was the peer of anyone I have seen on the stage.

To an extraordinary flow of language he added a range of information and a vividness of expression truly astonishing. His favorite themes were politics and the lives of great men. To his monologues on the former subject he brought a ripe wisdom, based upon the most extensive reading and the shrewdest observation, and quickened by the keenest enthusiasm. He was by no means a political bigot; and there was not a political experiment, from the democracy of the Greeks to the referendum in Switzerland, with the details of which he was not perfectly familiar. Although he was a convinced believer in the Republican form of government, having, as he expressed it, "no use for the King business," he was fully alive to the peculiar dangers and difficulties with which modern progress has confronted popular institutions.

When the publication of some work like Rosebery's Chatham or Monypenny's Disraeli afforded an occasion, Mr. Pulitzer would spend an hour before we left the table in giving us a picture of some exciting crisis in English politics, the high lights picked out in pregnant phrases of characterization, in brilliant epitome of the facts, in spontaneous epigram, and illustrative anecdote. Whether he spoke of the Holland House circle, of the genius of Cromwell, of Napoleon's campaigns, or sought to point a moral from the lives of Bismarck, Metternich, Louis XI, or Kossuth, every sentence was marked by the same penetrating analysis, the same facility of expression, the same clearness of thought.

On rare occasions he talked of his early days, telling us in a charming, simple, and unaffected manner of the tragic and humorous episodes with which his youth had been crowded. Of the former I recall a striking description of a period during which he filled two positions in St. Louis, one involving eight hours' work during the day, the other eight hours during the night. Four of the remaining eight were devoted to studying English.

His first connection with journalism arose out of an experience which he related with a wealth of detail which showed how deeply it had been burned into his memory.

When he arrived in St. Louis he soon found himself at the end of his resources, and was faced with the absolute impossibility of securing work in that city. In company with forty other men he applied at the office of a general agent who had advertised for hands to go down the Mississippi and take up well-paid posts on a Louisiana sugar plantation. The agent demanded a fee of five dollars from each applicant, and, by pooling their resources, the members of this wretched band managed to meet the charge. The same night they were taken on board a steamer which immediately started down river. At three o'clock in the morning they were landed on the river bank about forty miles below St. Louis, at a spot where there was neither house, road, nor clearing. Before the marooned party had time to realize its plight the steamer had disappeared.

A council of war was held, and it was decided that they should tramp back to St. Louis, and put a summary termination to the agent's career by storming his office and murdering him. Whether or not this reckless program would have been carried out it is impossible to say, for when, three days later, the ragged army arrived in the city, worn out with fatigue and half dead from hunger, the agent had decamped.

A reporter happened to pick up the story, and by mere chance met Pulitzer and induced him to write out in German the tale of his experiences. This account created such an impression on the mind of the editor through whose hands it passed that Pulitzer was offered, and accepted, with the greatest misgivings, as he solemnly assured us, a position as reporter on the Westliche Post.

The event proved that there had been no grounds for J. P.'s modest doubts. After he had been some time on the paper, things went so badly that two reporters had to be got rid of. The editor kept Pulitzer on the staff, because he felt that if anyone was destined to force him out of the editorial chair it was not a young, uneducated foreigner, who could hardly mumble half-a-dozen words of English. The editor was mistaken. Within a few years J. P. not only supplanted him but became half- proprietor of the paper.

Another interesting anecdote of his early days, which he told with great relish, related to his experience as a fireman on a Mississippi ferryboat. His limited knowledge of English was regarded by the captain as a personal affront, and that fire-eating old-timer made it his particular business to let young Pulitzer feel the weight of his authority. At last the overwork and the constant bullying drove J. P. into revolt, and he left the boat after a violent quarrel with the captain.

Whenever J. P. reached this point in the story, and I heard him tell it several times, his face lighted up with amusement, and he had to stop until he had enjoyed a good laugh.

"Well, my God!" he would conclude, "about two years later, when I had learned English and studied some law and been made a notary public, this very same captain walked into my office in St. Louis one day to have some documents sealed. As soon as he saw me he stopped short, as if he had seen a ghost, and said, "Say, ain't you the damned cuss that I fired off my boat?"

"I told him yes, I was. He was the most surprised man I ever saw, but after he had sworn himself hoarse he faced the facts and gave me his business."

Mr. Pulitzer always declared that the proudest day of his life, the occasion on which his vanity was most tickled, was when he was elected to the Missouri Legislature. Things were evidently run in a rather happy-go-lucky fashion in those early days, since, as he admitted with a reminiscent smile, he was absolutely disqualified for election, being neither an American citizen nor of age.

Mr. Pulitzer's anecdotes about himself always ended in one way. He would break off suddenly and exclaim, "For Heaven's sake, why do you let me run on like this; as soon as a man gets into the habit of talking about his past adventures he might just as well make up his mind that he is growing old and that his intellect is giving way."

It was this strong disinclination for personal reminiscence which prevented Mr. Pulitzer, despite many urgent appeals, from writing his autobiography. It is a thousand pities that he adhered to this resolution, for his career, as well in point of interest as in achievement and picturesqueness, would have stood the test of comparison with that of any man whose life-story has been preserved in literature.



CHAPTER VI

WIESBADEN AND AN ATLANTIC VOYAGE

At last the time came when we had to leave the yacht and make a pilgrimage to Wiesbaden, in order that Mr. Pulitzer might submit to a cure before sailing for New York.

The first stage of our journey took us from Genoa to Milan. Here we stayed for five hours so that J. P. could have his lunch and his siesta comfortably at an hotel. Paterson had been sent ahead two or three days in advance to look over the hotels and to select the one which promised to be least noisy. On our arrival in Milan J. P. was taken to an automobile, and in ten minutes he was in his rooms.

Simple as these arrangements appear from the bald statement of what actually happened they really involved a great deal of care and forethought. It was not enough that Paterson should visit half-a-dozen hotels and make his choice from a cursory inspection. After his choice had been narrowed down by a process of elimination he had to spend several hours in each of two or three hotels, in the room intended for J. P., so that he could detect any of the hundred noises which might make the room uninhabitable to its prospective tenant.

The room might be too near the elevator, it might be too near a servants' staircase, it might overlook a courtyard where carpets were beaten, or a street with heavy traffic, it might be within earshot of a dining-room where an orchestra played or a smoking-room with the possibility of loud talking, it might open off a passage which gave access to some much frequented reception-room.

Most of these points could be determined by merely observing the location of the room. But other things were to be considered. Did the windows rattle, did the floor creak, did the doors open and shut quietly, was the ventilation good, were there noisy guests in the adjoining rooms?

This last difficulty was, I understand, usually overcome by Mr. Pulitzer engaging, in addition to his own room, a room on either side of it, three rooms facing it, the room above it and the room beneath it.

Even the question of the drive from the station to the hotel had to be thought out. A trial trip was made in an automobile. If the route followed a car line or passed any spot likely to be noisy, such as a market place or a school playground, or if it led over a roughly paved road on which the car would jolt, another route had to be selected, which, as far as possible, dodged the unfavorable conditions.

Our carefully arranged journey passed without incident. We had a private car from Milan to Frankfort and another for the short run to Wiesbaden, where we arrived in time for lunch on the day after our departure from Genoa. Everything had been prepared for our reception by some one who had made similar arrangements on former occasions. We occupied the whole of a villa belonging to one of the large hotels, and situated less than a hundred yards from it.

In the main our life was modeled upon that at the Cap Martin villa; but part of Mr. Pulitzer's morning was devoted to baths, massage, and the drinking of waters. Our meals were taken, as a rule, either in a private dining-room at the hotel or in the big restaurant of the Kurhaus; but when Mr. Pulitzer was feeling more than usually tired the table was laid in the dining-room of the villa.

Our dinners at the Kurhaus were a welcome change from our ordinary meals with their set routine of literary discussions. Mr. Pulitzer was immensely interested in people; but it was impossible for him to meet them, except on rare occasions, because the excitement was bad for his health. Whenever he dined in a crowded restaurant, however, our time was fully occupied in describing with the utmost minuteness the men, women, and children around us.

The Kurhaus was an excellent place for the exercise of our descriptive powers. In addition to the ordinary crowd of pleasure-seekers and health-hunters there were, during a great part of our visit, a large number of military men, for the Kaiser spent a week at Wiesbaden that year and reviewed some troops, and this involved careful preparation in advance by a host of court officials and high army officers.

Under these circumstances the dining-room of the Kurhaus presented a scene full of color and animation. Sometimes J. P. said to one of us: "Look around for a few minutes and pick out the most interesting- looking man and woman in the room, examine them carefully, try and catch the tone of their voices, and when you are ready describe them to me." Or he might say: "I hear a curious, sharp, incisive voice somewhere over there on my right. There it is now—don't you hear it?—s s s s s, every s like a hiss. Describe that man to me; tell me what kind of people he's talking to; tell me what you think his profession is." Or it might be: "There are some gabbling women over there. Describe them to me. How are they dressed, are they painted, are they wearing jewels, how old are they?"

In whatever form the request was made its fulfilment meant a description covering everything which could be detected by the eye or surmised from any available clew.

Describing people to J. P. was by no means an easy task. It was no use saying that a man had a medium-sized nose, that he was of average height, and that his hair was rather dark. Everything had to be given in feet and inches and in definite colors. You had to exercise your utmost powers to describe the exact cast of the features, the peculiar texture and growth of the hair, the expression of the eyes, and every little trick of gait or gesture.

Mr. Pulitzer was very sceptical of everybody's faculty of description. He made us describe people, and specially his own children and others whom he knew well, again and again, and his unwillingness to accept any description as being good rested no doubt upon the wide divergence between the different descriptions he received of the same person.

There were few things which Mr. Pulitzer enjoyed more than having a face described to him, whether of a living person or of a portrait, and as our table-talk was often about men and women of distinction or notoriety, dead or living, any one of us might be called upon at any time to portray feature by feature some person whose name had been mentioned.

By providing ourselves with illustrated catalogues of the Royal Academy exhibitions and of the National Portrait Gallery, and by cutting out the portraits with which the modern publisher so lavishly decorates his announcements, we generally managed, by pulling together, to cover the ground pretty well. I have sat through a meal during which one or another of us furnished a microscopic description of the faces of Warren Hastings, Lord Clive, President Wilson, the present King and Queen of England, the late John W. Gates, Ignace Paderewski, and an odd dozen current murderers, embezzlers, divorce habitues, and candidates for political office.

The delicate enjoyment of this game was not reached, however, until, at the following meal, one of us, who had been absent at the original delineation, was asked to cover some of the ground that had been gone over a few hours earlier. Mr. Pulitzer would say: "Is Mr. So-and-So here? Well, now, just for fun, let us see what he has to say about the appearance of some of the people we spoke about at lunch."

The result was almost always an astonishing disclosure of the inability of intelligent people to observe closely, to describe accurately, and to reach any agreement as to the significance of what they have seen. It was bad enough when the latest witness had before him the actual pictures on which the first description had been based; even then crooked noses became straight, large mouths small, disdain was turned to affability and ingenuousness to guile; but where this guide was lacking the descriptions were often ludicrously discrepant.

While we were at Wiesbaden we seldom spent much time at the dinner table, as J. P. usually took his choice between walking in the garden of the Kurhaus and listening to the orchestra and going to the opera. One night we motored over to Frankfort to hear Der Rosenkavalier, but the excursion was a dismal failure. We had to go over a stretch of very bad road, and with J. P. shaken into a state of extreme nervousness the very modern strains of the opera failed to please.

At the end of the second act J. P., who had been growing more and more dismal as the music bumped along its disjointed course, either in vain search or in careful avoidance of anything resembling a pleasant sound, turned to me and said: "My God! I can't stand any more of this. Will you please go and find the automobile and bring it round to the main entrance. I want to go home."

I saw a great deal of Mr. Pulitzer while we were at Wiesbaden, owing to the circumstance that Paterson was called to England on urgent private affairs and Pollard was away on leave. The absence of these two men was as much regretted by the staff as it was by J. P. himself. Paterson was, from his extraordinary erudition, seldom at a loss for a topic of conversation which would rivet J. P.'s attention, and Pollard, who had been a number of years with J. P., was not only, on his own subjects, the conversational peer of Paterson, but was in addition, from his soothing voice and manner and from his long and careful study of J. P., invaluable as a mental and nervous sedative.

It was at Wiesbaden that I first began to read books regularly to J. P. I read him portions of the biographies of Parnell, of Sir William Howard Russell, of President Polk (very little of this), of Napoleon, of Martin Luther, and at least a third of Macaulay's Essays.

He was a great admirer of Lord Macaulay's writings and read them constantly, as he found in them most of the qualities which he admired— great descriptive power, political acumen, satire, neatness of phrase, apt comparisons and analogies, and shrewd analysis of character. Many passages he made me read over and over again at different times. I reproduce a few of his favorite paragraphs for the purpose of showing what appealed to his taste.

From the Essay on Sir William Temple, the following lines referring to the Right Hon. Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, who, after his retirement from public life, wrote the Memoirs of Temple and stated in his preface that experience had taught him the superiority of literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings and conducing to an agreeable life:

He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is mocked with the name of power.

More often than any others I read him the following passages from the Essay on Milton:

The final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good government in the world.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces; and that cure is freedom.

The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos.

If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.

I was surprised one day on returning to the villa after a walk in the Kurhaus gardens with J. P. to find an addition to our company in the person of the second gentleman who had examined me in London at the time I had applied for the post of secretary to Mr. Pulitzer.

This gentleman occupied what I imagine must have been the only post of its kind in the world. He was, in addition to whatever other duties he performed, Mr. Pulitzer's villa-seeker.

It was Mr. Pulitzer's custom to talk a good deal about his future plans, not those for the immediate future, in regard to which he was usually very reticent, but those for the following year, or for a vague "someday" when many things were to be done which as yet were nothing more than the toys with which his imagination delighted to play.

As he always spent a great part of the year in Europe, a residence had to be found for him, it might be in Vienna, or London, or Berlin, or Mentone, or in any other place which emerged as a possibility out of the long discussions of the next year's itinerary.

Whenever the arguments in favor of any place had so far prevailed that a visit there had been accepted in principle as one of our future movements it became the duty of the villa-seeker to go to the locality, to gather a mass of information about its climate, its amenities, its resident and floating population, its accessibility by sea and land, the opportunities for hearing good music, and to report in the minutest detail upon all available houses which appeared likely to suit Mr. Pulitzer's needs.

These reports were accompanied by maps, plans, and photographs, and they were considered by J. P. with the utmost care. Particular attention was paid to the streets and to the country roads in the neighborhood, as it was necessary to have facilities for motoring, for riding, and for walking.

The next step was to secure a villa, and after that had been done the alterations had to be undertaken which would make it habitable for J. P. These might be of a comparatively simple nature, a matter of fitting silencers to the doors and putting up double windows to keep out the noise; but they might extend much further and involve more or less elaborate changes in the interior arrangements. Even after all this had been done a sudden shift of plans might send the villa-seeker scurrying across Europe to begin the whole process over again in order to be prepared for new developments.

At the time I left London to join J. P. at Mentone I had stipulated that, if I should chance to be selected to fill the vacant post, I should not be called upon to take up my duties until I had returned to London and spent a fortnight there in clearing up my private affairs.

After we had been a few weeks at Wiesbaden it became absolutely necessary for me to go to London for that purpose; and this led to a struggle with J. P. which nearly brought our relations to an end.

As soon as I broached the subject of a fortnight's leave of absence J. P. set his face firmly against the proposal. This was due not so much to any feeling on his part that my absence would be an inconvenience to him, for both Paterson and Pollard had returned to duty, but to an almost unconquerable repugnance he had to any one except himself initiating any plan which would in the slightest degree affect his arrangements. His sensitiveness on this point was so delicate that it was impossible, for instance, for any of us to accept an invitation to lunch or dine with friends who might happen to be in our neighborhood, or to ask for half a day off for any purpose whatever.

I do not mean to say that we never got away for a meal or that we were never free for a few hours; as a matter of fact, J. P. was by no means ungenerous in such things once a man had passed the trial stage; but, although J. P. might say to you, "Take two days off and amuse yourself," or "Take the evening off, and don't trouble to get back to work until lunch-time to-morrow," it was out of the question for you to say to J. P.: "An old friend of mine is here for the day, would you mind my taking lunch with him?"

No one, I am sure, ever made a suggestion of that kind to J. P. more than once—the effect upon him was too startling.

J. P.'s favors in the way of giving time off were always granted subject to a change of mind on his part; and these changes were often so sudden that it was our custom as soon as leave was given to disappear from the yacht or the villa at the earliest possible moment. But at times even an instant departure was too slow, for it might happen that before you were out of the room J. P. would say: "Just a moment, Mr. So-and-So, you wouldn't mind if I asked you to put off your holiday till to-morrow, would you? I think I would like you to finish that novel this evening; I am really interested to see how it comes out."

This, of course, was rather disappointing; but the great disadvantage of not getting away was that Mr. Pulitzer's memory generally clung very tenaciously to the fact that he had given you leave, and lost the subsequent act of rescinding it. The effect of this was that for the practical purpose of getting a day off your turn was used up as soon as J. P. granted it, without any reference to whether you actually got it or not; and the phrase, "until to-morrow," was not to be interpreted literally or to be acted upon without a further distinct permission.

The only "right" any of us had to time off was to our annual vacation of two weeks, which we had to take whenever J. P. wished. If, for any reason, one of us wanted leave of absence for a week or so, the matter had to be put into the hands of the discreet and diplomatic Dunningham; and so when the time came when I simply had to go to London it was to Dunningham I went for counsel.

Judging by the results, his intercession on my behalf was not very successful, for, on the occasion of our next meeting, J. P. made it clear to me that if I insisted on going to London it would be on pain of his displeasure and at the peril of my post. As I look back upon the incident, however, it is quite clear to me that the whole of his arguments and his dark hints were launched merely to test my sense of duty to those persons in London whom I had promised to see.

A day or two later J. P. told me that as I was going to London I might as well stay there for a month or two before joining him in New York. He outlined a course of study for me, which included lessons in speaking (my voice being harsh and unpleasant) and visits to all the principal art galleries, theaters and other places of interest, with a view to describing everything when I rejoined him.

On the eve of my departure Dunningham handed me, with Mr. Pulitzer's compliments, an envelope containing a handsome present, in the most acceptable form a present can take.

It was not until I was in the train, and the train had started, that I was able to realize that I was free. During the journey to London my extraordinary experiences of the past three months detached themselves from the sum of my existence and became cloaked with that haze of unreality which belongs to desperate illness or to a tragedy looked back upon from days of health and peace. Walking down St. James's Street twenty-four hours after leaving Wiesbaden, J. P. and the yacht and the secretaries invaded my memory not as things experienced but as things seen in a play or read in a story long ago.

I lost no time in making myself comfortable in London. Inquiries directed to the proper quarter soon brought me into touch with a gentleman to whose skill, I was assured, no voice, however disagreeable, could fail to respond. I saw my friends, my business associates, my tailor. I went to see Fanny's First Play three times, the National Portrait Gallery twice, the National Gallery once, and laid out my plans to see all the places in London (shame forbidding me to enumerate them) which every Englishman ought to have seen and which I had not seen.

This lasted for about two weeks, during which I saw something of Craven, who had left us in Naples to study something or other in London, and who was under orders to hold himself in readiness to go to New York with J. P. We dined at my club one night, and when I returned to my flat I found a telegram from Mr. Tuohy, instructing me to join J. P. in Liverpool the next day in time to sail early in the afternoon on the Cedric, as it had been decided to leave Craven in London for the present.

The voyage differed but little from our cruises in the yacht. J. P. took his meals in his own suite, and as Mrs. Pulitzer and Miss Pulitzer were on board they usually dined with him, one of the secretaries making a fourth at table.

In the matter of guarding J. P. from noise, extraordinary precautions were taken. Heavy mats were laid outside his cabin, specially made a dozen years before and stored by the White Star people waiting his call; that portion of the deck which surrounded his suite was roped off so that the passengers could not promenade there; and a close-fitting green baize door shut off the corridor leading to his quarters. His meals were served by his own butler and by one of the yacht stewards; and his daily routine went on as usual.

During the voyage I was broken in to the task of reading the magazines to J. P. So far as current issues were concerned I had to take the ones he liked best—The Atlantic Monthly, The American Magazine, The Quarterly Review, The Edinburgh Review, The World's Work, and The North American Review—and thoroughly master their contents.

While I was engaged on this sufficiently arduous labor I made, on cards, lists of the titles of all the articles and abstracts of all the more important ones. I have by me as I write a number of these lists, and I reproduce one of them.

The following list of articles represents what Mr. Pulitzer got from me in a highly condensed form during ONE HOUR: "The Alleged Passing of Wagner," "The Decline and Fall of Wagner," "The Mission of Richard Wagner," "The Swiftness of Justice in England and in the United States," "The Public Lands of the United States," "New Zealand and the Woman's Vote," "The Lawyer and the Community," "The Tariff Make-believe," "The Smithsonian Institute," "The Spirit and Letter of Exclusion," "The Panama Canal and American Shipping," "The Authors and Signers of the Declaration of Independence," "The German Social Democracy," "The Changing Position of American Trade," "The Passing of Polygamy."

I remember very well the occasion on which I gave him these articles. We were walking on one of the lower promenade decks of the Cedric, and J. P. asked me if I had any magazine articles ready for him. I told him, having the list of articles in my left hand, that I had fifteen ready. He pulled out his watch, and holding it toward me said:

"What time is it?"

"Twelve o'clock," I replied.

"Very good; that gives us an hour before lunch. Now go on with your articles; I'll allow you four minutes for each of them."

He did not actually take four minutes for each, for some of them did not interest him after my summary had run for a minute or so, but we just got the fifteen in during the hour.

After all that was possible had been done in the way of reducing the number of magazine articles, by rejecting the unsuitable ones, and their length by careful condensation, we were unable to keep pace with the supply. When a hundred or so magazines had accumulated Mr. Pulitzer had the lists of contents read to him, and from these he selected the articles which he wished to have read; and these arrears were disposed of when an opportunity presented itself.

At times Mr. Pulitzer did not feel well enough to take this concentrated mental food, and turned for relief to novels, plays and light literature; at times, when he was feeling unusually well, he occupied himself for several days in succession with matters concerning The World—in dictating editorials, letters of criticism, instruction and inquiry, or in considering the endless problems relating to policy, business management, personnel, and the soaring price of white paper.