章节正文
You haven't any place to go, have you?"
"No," said Vallance, "nowhere to-night. I'll
have a bench with you."
"You take it cool," said Ide, "if you've told it to
me straight. I should think a man put on the bum
from a good job just in one day would be tearing his
hair."
"I believe I've already remarked," said Vallance,
laughing, "that I would have thought that a man
who was expecting to come into a fortune on the
next day would be feeling pretty easy and quiet."
"It's funny business," philosophized Ide, "about
the way people take things, anyhow. Here's your
bench, Dawson, right next to mine. The light don't
shine in your eyes here. Say, Dawson, I'll get the
old man to give you a letter to somebody about a job
when I get back home. You've helped me a lot to-
night. I don't believe I could have gone through
the night if I hadn't struck you."
"Thank you," said Vallance. "Do you lie down
or sit up on these when you sleep?
For hours Vallance gazed almost without winking
at the stars through the branches of the trees and
listened to the sharp slapping of horses' hoofs on the
sea of asphalt to the south His mind was active,
but his feelings were dormant. Every emotion
seemed to have been eradicated. Ide felt no regrets,
no fears, no pain or discomfort. Even when be
thought of the girl, it was as of an inhabitant of one
of those remote stars at which be gazed. He re-
membered the absurd antics of his companion and
laughed softly, yet without a feeling of mirth. Soon
the daily army of milk wagons made of the city a
roaring drum to which they marched. Vallance fell
asleep on his comfortless bench.
At ten o'clock on the next day the two stood at the
door of Lawyer Mead's office in Ann Street.
Ide's nerves fluttered worse than ever when the
hour approached; and Vallance could not decide to
leave him a possible prey to the dangers he dreaded.
When they entered the office, Lawyer Mead looked
at them wonderingly. He and Vallance were old
friends. After his greeting, he turned to Ide, who
stood with white face and trembling limbs before the
expected crisis.
"I sent a second letter to your address last night,
Mr. Ide," he said. "I learned this morning that
you were not there to receive it. It will inform you
that Mr. Paulding has reconsidered his offer to take
you back into favor. He has decided not to do so,
and desires you to understand that no change will be
made in the relations existing between you and
him."
Ide's trembling suddenly ceased. The color came
back to his face, and be straightened his back. His
jaw went forward half an inch, and a gleam came
into his eye. He pushed back his battered bat with
one hand, and extended the other, with levelled fin-
gers, toward the lawyer. He took a long breath and
then laughed sardonically.
"Tell old Paulding he may go to the devil," he
said, loudly and clearly, and turned and walked out
of the office with a firm and lively step.
Lawyer Mead turned on his heel to Vallance and
smiled.
"I am glad you came in," he said, genially.
"Your uncle wants you to return home at once. He
is reconciled to the situation that led to his hasty
action, and desires to say that all will be as -- "
"Hey, Adams!" cried Lawyer Mead, breaking his
sentence, and calling to his clerk. "Bring a glass of
water Mr. Vallance has fainted."
THE PLUTONIAN FIRE
There are a few editor men with whom I am privi-
leged to come in contact. It has not been long since
it was their habit to come in contact with me. There
is a difference.
They tell me that with a large number of the
manuscripts that are submitted to them come advices
(in the way of a boost) from the author asseverating
that the incidents in the story are true. The des-
tination of such contributions depends wholly upon
the question of the enclosure of stamps. Some are
returned, the rest are thrown on the floor in a corner
on top of a pair of gum shoes, an overturned statu-
ette of the Winged Victory, and a pile of old maga-
zines containing a picture of the editor in the act
of reading the latest copy of Le Petit Journal, right
side up - you can tell by the illustrations. It is
only a legend that there are waste baskets in editors'
offices.
Thus is truth held in disrepute. But in time truth
and science and nature will adapt themselves to art.
Things will happen logically, and the villain be dis-
comfited instead of being elected to the board of
directors. But in the meantimefiction must not only
be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be
awarded custody of the press despatches.
This preamble is to warn you off the grade cross-
ing of a true story. Being that, it shall be told sim-
ply, with conjunctions substituted for adjectives
wherever possible, and whatever evidences of style
may appear in it shall be due to the linotype man.
It is a story of the literary life in a great city, and
it should be of interest to every author within a 20-
mile radius of Gosport, Ind., whose desk holds a MS.
story beginning thus: "While the cheers following
his nomination were still ringing through the old
courthouse, Harwood broke away from the congrat-
ulating handclasps of his henchmen and hurried to
Judge Creswell's house to find Ida."
Pettit came up out of Alabama to write fiction.
The Southern papers had printed eight of his stories
under an editorial caption identifying the author as
the son of "the gallant Major Pettingill Pettit, our
former County Attorney and hero of the battle of
Lookout Mountain."
Pettit was a rugged fellow, with a kind of shame-
faced culture, and my good friend. His father kept
a general store in a little town called Hosea. Pettit
had been raised in the pine-woods and broom-sedge
fields adjacentthereto. He had in his gripsack two
manuscript novels of the adventures in Picardy of
one Gaston Laboulaye, Vicompte de Montrepos, in
the year 1329. That's nothing. We all do that.
And some day when we make a hit with the little
sketch about a newsy and his lame dog, the editor
prints the other one for us -- or "on us," as the say-
ing is -- and then -- and then we have to get a big
valise and peddle those patent air-draft gas burners.
At $1.25 everybody should have 'em.
I took Pettit to the red-brick house which was to
appear in an article entitled "Literary Landmarks
of Old New York," some day when we got through
with it. He engaged a room there, drawing on the
general store for his expenses. I showed New York
to him, and he did not mention how much narrower
Broadway is than Lee Avenue in Hosea. This
seemed a good sign, so I put the final test.
"Suppose you try your band at a descriptive arti-
cle," I suggested, "giving your impressions of New
York as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge. The fresh
point of view, the -- "
"Don't be a fool," said Pettit. "Let's go have
some beer. On the whole I rather like the city."
We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia.
Every day and night we repaired to one of those
palaces of marble and glass and tilework, where goes
on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla
itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The
classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-
flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white
scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups
and bowls the flashing staccato of brandishing cut-
lery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned
grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the
recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register -- it was a
gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a
deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and em-
blematic life. And the beans were only ten cents.
We wondered why our fellow-artists cared to dine at
sad little tables in their so-called Bohemian restau-
rants; and we shuddered lest they should seek out our
resorts and make them conspicuous with their pres-
ence.
Pettit wrote many stories, which the editors re-
turned to him. He wrote love stories, a thing I have
always kept free from, holding the belief that the
well-known and popular sentiment is not properly a
matter for publication, but something to be privately
handled by the alienists and florists. But the editors
had told him that they wanted love stories, because
they said the women read them.
Now, the editors are wrong about that, of course.
Women do not read the love stories in the magazines.
They read the poker-game stories and the recipes
for cucumber lotion. The love stories are read by
fat cigar drummers and little ten-year-old girls. I
am not criticising the judgment of editors. They
are mostly very fine men, but a man can be but one
man, with individual opinions and tastes. I knew
two associate editors of a magazine who were won-
derfully alike in almost everything. And yet one
of them was very fond of Flaubert, while the other
preferred gin.
Pettit brought me his returned manuscripts, and
we looked them over together to find out why they
were not accepted. They seemed to me pretty fair
stories, written in a good style, and ended, as they
should, at the bottom of the last page.
They were well constructed and the events were
marshalled in orderly and logicalsequence. But I
thought I detected a lack of living substance -- it
was much as if I gazed at a symmetrical array of
presentable clamshells from which the succulent and
vital inhabitants had been removed. I intimated that
the author might do well to get better acquainted with
his theme.
"You sold a story last week," said Pettit, "about
a gun fight in an Arizona mining town in which the
hero drew his Colt's .45 and shot seven bandits as
"No," said Vallance, "nowhere to-night. I'll
have a bench with you."
"You take it cool," said Ide, "if you've told it to
me straight. I should think a man put on the bum
from a good job just in one day would be tearing his
hair."
"I believe I've already remarked," said Vallance,
laughing, "that I would have thought that a man
who was expecting to come into a fortune on the
next day would be feeling pretty easy and quiet."
"It's funny business," philosophized Ide, "about
the way people take things, anyhow. Here's your
bench, Dawson, right next to mine. The light don't
shine in your eyes here. Say, Dawson, I'll get the
old man to give you a letter to somebody about a job
when I get back home. You've helped me a lot to-
night. I don't believe I could have gone through
the night if I hadn't struck you."
"Thank you," said Vallance. "Do you lie down
or sit up on these when you sleep?
For hours Vallance gazed almost without winking
at the stars through the branches of the trees and
listened to the sharp slapping of horses' hoofs on the
sea of asphalt to the south His mind was active,
but his feelings were dormant. Every emotion
seemed to have been eradicated. Ide felt no regrets,
no fears, no pain or discomfort. Even when be
thought of the girl, it was as of an inhabitant of one
of those remote stars at which be gazed. He re-
membered the absurd antics of his companion and
laughed softly, yet without a feeling of mirth. Soon
the daily army of milk wagons made of the city a
roaring drum to which they marched. Vallance fell
asleep on his comfortless bench.
At ten o'clock on the next day the two stood at the
door of Lawyer Mead's office in Ann Street.
Ide's nerves fluttered worse than ever when the
hour approached; and Vallance could not decide to
leave him a possible prey to the dangers he dreaded.
When they entered the office, Lawyer Mead looked
at them wonderingly. He and Vallance were old
friends. After his greeting, he turned to Ide, who
stood with white face and trembling limbs before the
expected crisis.
"I sent a second letter to your address last night,
Mr. Ide," he said. "I learned this morning that
you were not there to receive it. It will inform you
that Mr. Paulding has reconsidered his offer to take
you back into favor. He has decided not to do so,
and desires you to understand that no change will be
made in the relations existing between you and
him."
Ide's trembling suddenly ceased. The color came
back to his face, and be straightened his back. His
jaw went forward half an inch, and a gleam came
into his eye. He pushed back his battered bat with
one hand, and extended the other, with levelled fin-
gers, toward the lawyer. He took a long breath and
then laughed sardonically.
"Tell old Paulding he may go to the devil," he
said, loudly and clearly, and turned and walked out
of the office with a firm and lively step.
Lawyer Mead turned on his heel to Vallance and
smiled.
"I am glad you came in," he said, genially.
"Your uncle wants you to return home at once. He
is reconciled to the situation that led to his hasty
action, and desires to say that all will be as -- "
"Hey, Adams!" cried Lawyer Mead, breaking his
sentence, and calling to his clerk. "Bring a glass of
water Mr. Vallance has fainted."
THE PLUTONIAN FIRE
There are a few editor men with whom I am privi-
leged to come in contact. It has not been long since
it was their habit to come in contact with me. There
is a difference.
They tell me that with a large number of the
manuscripts that are submitted to them come advices
(in the way of a boost) from the author asseverating
that the incidents in the story are true. The des-
tination of such contributions depends wholly upon
the question of the enclosure of stamps. Some are
returned, the rest are thrown on the floor in a corner
on top of a pair of gum shoes, an overturned statu-
ette of the Winged Victory, and a pile of old maga-
zines containing a picture of the editor in the act
of reading the latest copy of Le Petit Journal, right
side up - you can tell by the illustrations. It is
only a legend that there are waste baskets in editors'
offices.
Thus is truth held in disrepute. But in time truth
and science and nature will adapt themselves to art.
Things will happen logically, and the villain be dis-
comfited instead of being elected to the board of
directors. But in the meantimefiction must not only
be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be
awarded custody of the press despatches.
This preamble is to warn you off the grade cross-
ing of a true story. Being that, it shall be told sim-
ply, with conjunctions substituted for adjectives
wherever possible, and whatever evidences of style
may appear in it shall be due to the linotype man.
It is a story of the literary life in a great city, and
it should be of interest to every author within a 20-
mile radius of Gosport, Ind., whose desk holds a MS.
story beginning thus: "While the cheers following
his nomination were still ringing through the old
courthouse, Harwood broke away from the congrat-
ulating handclasps of his henchmen and hurried to
Judge Creswell's house to find Ida."
Pettit came up out of Alabama to write fiction.
The Southern papers had printed eight of his stories
under an editorial caption identifying the author as
the son of "the gallant Major Pettingill Pettit, our
former County Attorney and hero of the battle of
Lookout Mountain."
Pettit was a rugged fellow, with a kind of shame-
faced culture, and my good friend. His father kept
a general store in a little town called Hosea. Pettit
had been raised in the pine-woods and broom-sedge
fields adjacentthereto. He had in his gripsack two
manuscript novels of the adventures in Picardy of
one Gaston Laboulaye, Vicompte de Montrepos, in
the year 1329. That's nothing. We all do that.
And some day when we make a hit with the little
sketch about a newsy and his lame dog, the editor
prints the other one for us -- or "on us," as the say-
ing is -- and then -- and then we have to get a big
valise and peddle those patent air-draft gas burners.
At $1.25 everybody should have 'em.
I took Pettit to the red-brick house which was to
appear in an article entitled "Literary Landmarks
of Old New York," some day when we got through
with it. He engaged a room there, drawing on the
general store for his expenses. I showed New York
to him, and he did not mention how much narrower
Broadway is than Lee Avenue in Hosea. This
seemed a good sign, so I put the final test.
"Suppose you try your band at a descriptive arti-
cle," I suggested, "giving your impressions of New
York as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge. The fresh
point of view, the -- "
"Don't be a fool," said Pettit. "Let's go have
some beer. On the whole I rather like the city."
We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia.
Every day and night we repaired to one of those
palaces of marble and glass and tilework, where goes
on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla
itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The
classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-
flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white
scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups
and bowls the flashing staccato of brandishing cut-
lery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned
grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the
recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register -- it was a
gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a
deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and em-
blematic life. And the beans were only ten cents.
We wondered why our fellow-artists cared to dine at
sad little tables in their so-called Bohemian restau-
rants; and we shuddered lest they should seek out our
resorts and make them conspicuous with their pres-
ence.
Pettit wrote many stories, which the editors re-
turned to him. He wrote love stories, a thing I have
always kept free from, holding the belief that the
well-known and popular sentiment is not properly a
matter for publication, but something to be privately
handled by the alienists and florists. But the editors
had told him that they wanted love stories, because
they said the women read them.
Now, the editors are wrong about that, of course.
Women do not read the love stories in the magazines.
They read the poker-game stories and the recipes
for cucumber lotion. The love stories are read by
fat cigar drummers and little ten-year-old girls. I
am not criticising the judgment of editors. They
are mostly very fine men, but a man can be but one
man, with individual opinions and tastes. I knew
two associate editors of a magazine who were won-
derfully alike in almost everything. And yet one
of them was very fond of Flaubert, while the other
preferred gin.
Pettit brought me his returned manuscripts, and
we looked them over together to find out why they
were not accepted. They seemed to me pretty fair
stories, written in a good style, and ended, as they
should, at the bottom of the last page.
They were well constructed and the events were
marshalled in orderly and logicalsequence. But I
thought I detected a lack of living substance -- it
was much as if I gazed at a symmetrical array of
presentable clamshells from which the succulent and
vital inhabitants had been removed. I intimated that
the author might do well to get better acquainted with
his theme.
"You sold a story last week," said Pettit, "about
a gun fight in an Arizona mining town in which the
hero drew his Colt's .45 and shot seven bandits as
- remote [ri´məut]
a.遥远的；偏僻的 (初中英语单词) - absurd [əb´sə:d] a.荒谬的，可笑的 (初中英语单词)
- companion [kəm´pæniən] n.同伴；同事；伴侣 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- lawyer [´lɔ:jə] n.律师；法学家 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- lively [´laivli] a.活泼的；热烈的 (初中英语单词)
- contact [´kɔntækt] n.接触；联系 v.联络 (初中英语单词)
- wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
- winged [´wiŋd] a.有翼的 (初中英语单词)
- victory [´viktəri] n.胜利，战胜 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- journal [´dʒə:nəl] n.日记；日报；杂志 (初中英语单词)
- meantime [´mi:ntaim] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- literary [´litərəri] a.文学(上)的 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- editorial [,edi´tɔ:riəl] a.编辑的 n.社论 (初中英语单词)
- gallant [´gælənt, gə´lænt] a.英勇的；华丽的 (初中英语单词)
- attorney [ə´tə:ni] n.代理人；律师 (初中英语单词)
- culture [´kʌltʃə] n.修养；文化；饲养 (初中英语单词)
- patent [´peitənt, ´pæ-] a.专利的 n.专利品 (初中英语单词)
- marble [´mɑ:bəl] n.大理石 a.大理石的 (初中英语单词)
- tremendous [tri´mendəs] a.可怕的；巨大的 (初中英语单词)
- glorious [´glɔ:riəs] a.光荣的；辉煌的 (初中英语单词)
- belief [bi´li:f] n.相信；信仰，信条 (初中英语单词)
- sentiment [´sentimənt] n.情绪；多愁善感 (初中英语单词)
- properly [´prɔpəli] ad.适当地；严格地 (初中英语单词)
- mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
- associate [ə´səuʃieit] v.联合a.同伴的n.伙伴 (初中英语单词)
- orderly [´ɔ:dəli] a.整洁的 n.勤务兵 (初中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- fiction [´fikʃən] n.小说；虚构；谎言 (高中英语单词)
- nomination [,nɔmi´neiʃən] n.提名(权)；任命(权) (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- rugged [´rʌgid] a.不平的；粗犷的 (高中英语单词)
- banquet [´bæŋkwit] n.宴会，盛宴 (高中英语单词)
- pageant [´pædʒənt] n.露天表演；虚饰 (高中英语单词)
- heroic [hi´rəuik] a.英雄的，英勇的 (高中英语单词)
- so-called [´sou ´kɔ:ld] a.所谓的，号称的 (高中英语单词)
- conspicuous [kən´spikjuəs] a.显著的；出众的 (高中英语单词)
- publication [,pʌbli´keiʃən] n.发表；公布；发行 (高中英语单词)
- arizona [,æri´zəunə] n.亚利桑那(州) (高中英语单词)
- mining [´mainiŋ] n.采矿；矿业 (高中英语单词)
- asphalt [´æsfælt] n.沥青 (英语四级单词)
- villain [´vilən] n.坏人；恶棍；反面角色 (英语四级单词)
- alabama [,ælə´bæmə] n.亚拉巴马(州) (英语四级单词)
- adjacent [ə´dʒeisənt] a.接近的；紧接着的 (英语四级单词)
- drawing [´drɔ:iŋ] n.画图；制图；图样 (英语四级单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- triumphant [trai´ʌmfənt] a.胜利的；洋洋得意的 (英语四级单词)
- cucumber [´kju:kʌmbə] n.黄瓜 (英语四级单词)
- logical [´lɔdʒikəl] a.逻辑(上)的 (英语四级单词)
- sequence [´si:kwəns] n.继续；顺序；程序 (英语四级单词)
- discomfort [dis´kʌmfət] n.不适；不安；困难 (英语六级单词)
- extended [iks´tendid] a.伸长的；广大的 (英语六级单词)
- calling [´kɔ:liŋ] n.点名；职业；欲望 (英语六级单词)
- enclosure [in´kləuʒə] n.包围；围墙；封入物 (英语六级单词)
- custody [´kʌstədi] n.保管；保护；拘留 (英语六级单词)
- radius [´reidiəs] n.辐射光线；半径范围 (英语六级单词)
- thereto [ðeə´tu:] ad.到那里；另外 (英语六级单词)
- piercing [´piəsiŋ] a.刺(贯)穿的；尖刻的 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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