An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer
Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.
AN ADVENTURE WITH A GENIUS Recollections of JOSEPH PULITZER.
In the course of my wanderings about the labyrinth of life it has been my good fortune to find awaiting me around every corner some new adventure. If these have generally lacked that vividness of action which to the eye of youth is the very test of adventure, they have been rich in a kind of experience which to a mature and reflective mind has a value not to be measured in terms of dramatic incident.
My adventures, in a word, have been chiefly those of personal contact with the sort of men whose lives are the material around which history builds its story, and from which fiction derives all that lends to it the air of reality.
I have had friends and acquaintances in a score of countries, and in every station of society—kings and beggars, viceroys and ward- politicians, judges and criminals, men of brain and men of brawn.
My first outstanding adventure was with a stern and formidable man, the captain of a sailing vessel, of whose ship's company I was one in a voyage across the Pacific; one of my most recent was with a man not less stern or formidable, with the man who is the central figure in the present narrative.
The tale has been told before in a volume entitled Joseph Pulitzer: Reminiscences of a Secretary. The volume has been out of print for some time, but the continued demand for it has called for its re-issue. The change in title has been made in response to many suggestions that the character of the material is more aptly described as An Adventure with a Genius.
ALLEYNE IRELAND. New York, 1920.
I. In a Casting Net II. Meeting Joseph Pulitzer III. Life at Cap Martin IV. Yachting in the Mediterranean V. Getting to Know Mr. Pulitzer VI. Weisbaden and an Atlantic Voyage VII. Bar Harbor and the Last Cruise
A long illness, a longer convalescence, a positive injunction from my doctor to leave friends and business associates and to seek some spot where a comfortable bed and good food could be had in convenient proximity to varied but mild forms of amusement—and I found myself in the autumn of the year 1910 free and alone in the delightful city of Hamburg.