H. R.

SHE PETRIFIED HERSELF WHEN SHE BEHELD THE MAN WHO HAD MADE HER FAMOUS
Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers
My dear Bob: In dedicating this book to you, I do more than follow the selfish impulse of pleasing myself. It was you who warned me that none of the usual fiction-labels would fit H. R. To irritate the reader by compelling him to think in order to understand was, you told me, both unfair and unwise. But a writer occasionally may be permitted to please himself, and if his experiment fails there remains the satisfaction of having tried. I have not labelled my jokes explicitly nor have I written a single foot-note in the middle of a page. I have endeavored to reproduce a recognizable atmosphere by intentionally exaggerating certain phases of the attitude of New York toward the eternal verities. Not even for purposes of contrast have I felt bound to have a nice character in the book. But if the reader fails to get what you so clearly understood, and if the critics point out how completely I have failed to write a Satirical Romance of To-day, I can at least make certain of having one line in this volume with which none may find fault. And that, Great and Good Friend, is the line at the top of this page.
E. L. Dorset, Vt., June, 1915.

The trouble was not in being a bank clerk, but in being a clerk in a bank that wanted him to be nothing but a bank clerk. That kind always enriches first the bank and later on a bit of soil.
Hendrik Rutgers had no desire to enrich either bank or soil.
He was blue-eyed, brown-haired, clear-skinned, rosy-cheeked, tall, well-built, and square-chinned. He always was in fine physical trim, which made people envy him so that they begrudged him advancement, but it also made them like him because they were so flattered when he reduced himself to their level by not bragging of his muscles. He had a quick-gaited mind and much fluency of speech. Also the peculiar sense of humor of a born leader that enabled him to laugh at what any witty devil said about others, even while it prevented him from seeing jokes aimed at his sacred self. He not only was congenitally stubborn—from his Dutch ancestors—but he had his Gascon grandmother's ability to believe whatever he wished to believe, and his Scandinavian great-grandfather's power to fill himself with Berserker rage in a twinkling. This made him begin all arguments by clenching his fists. Having in his veins so many kinds of un-American blood, he was one of the few real Americans in his own country, and he always said so.