And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better.  It was, if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended to appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the arrangement of its best points.  This I explained to him, and also made it clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me.  He seemed willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve, as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more.  He grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost if not quite satisfactory.  During a number of weeks and months thereafter, working on one “special” and another in this way with me, he seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a method of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and I was very much pleased.  A little later I employed him at a regular salary.

It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do and the conditions under which we were trying to do them—­the raw commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as I saw it then, have to argue over at all.  We were in new rooms, in a new building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion of partitions which, as some one remarked, “would divide us up.”  Our publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of “push,” ambition, “closeness to life,” “punch,” and what not else, American to the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, demanding the “hows” and the “whyfors” of the dream which the little group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real.

It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here was a youth who seemed able to help me do it.  He was so vigorous, so avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this magazine was now seeking to portray.  I felt stronger, better for having him around.  The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order in which it must be presented.  A few brief technical explanations from me, and he had the art of writing a “special” at his fingertips, and thereafter gave me no real difficulty.