As I ate I listened to the conversation.  It made my heart sink.  The gentleman to whom Mr. Pulitzer had transferred his attentions was a Scotchman, Mr. William Romaine Paterson.  I discovered later that he was the nearest possible approach to a walking encyclopedia.  His range of information was—­well, I am tempted to say, infamous.  He appeared to have an exhaustive knowledge of French, German, Italian, and English literature, of European history in its most complicated ramifications, and of general biography in such a measure that, in regard to people as well known as Goethe, Voltaire, Kossuth, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Bismarck, and a score of others, he could fix a precise day on which any event or conversation had taken place, and recall it in its minutest details.

It was not simply from the standpoint of my own ignorance that Paterson’s store of knowledge assumed such vast proportions, for it was seldom opened except in the presence of Mr. Pulitzer, in whom were combined a tenacious memory, a profound acquaintance with the subjects which Paterson had taken for his province, an analytic mind, and a zest for contradiction.  Everything Paterson said was immediately pounced upon by a vigorous, astute, and well-informed critic who derived peculiar satisfaction from the rare instances in which he could detect him in an inaccuracy.

The conversation between Mr. Pulitzer and Paterson, or, rather, Paterson’s frequently interrupted monologue, lasted until we had all finished dinner, and the butler had lighted Mr. Pulitzer’s cigar.  In the middle of an eloquent passage from Paterson, Mr. Pulitzer rose, turned abruptly toward me, held out his hand, and said, “I’m very glad to have met you, Mr. Ireland; you have entertained me very much.  Please come here to-morrow at eleven o’clock, and I’ll take you out for a drive.  Good-night.”  He took Paterson’s arm and left the room.

The door, like all the doors in Mr. Pulitzer’s various residences, shut automatically and silently; and after one of the secretaries had drawn a heavy velvet curtain across the doorway, so that not the faintest sound could escape from the room, I was chaffed good-naturedly about my debut as a candidate.  To my great surprise I was congratulated on having done very well.

“You made a great hit,” said one, “with your account of Shaw’s play.”

“I nearly burst out laughing,” said another, “when you gave your views about memory.  I think you’re dead right about it; but J. P.—­Mr. Pulitzer was always referred to as J. P.—­is crazy about people having good memories, so if you’ve really got a good memory you’d better let him find it out.”

I was told that, so far as we were concerned, the day’s work, or at least that portion of it which involved being with J. P., was to be considered over as soon as he retired to the library after dinner.  His object then was to be left alone with one secretary, who read to him until about ten o’clock, when the major-domo came and took him to his rooms for the night.  As a rule, J. P. made no further demand on the bodily presence of his secretaries after he had gone to bed, but occasionally, when he could not sleep, one of them would be called, perhaps at three in the morning, to read to him.