TWO MEN WHO TOUCHED MY SOUL
When I was a young man I had occasion to write something for the local paper, published near my home. The late Girard Wright, brother of Theodore, editor-in-chief of the Philadelphia Record, was managing the paper at the time. He sent for me. Timidly I called at the office, for I was an awkward country youth and afraid of men who were established in the business world. There did not seem to be any place in the world for me outside of a barren hillside farm, and I always felt like a thief stealing off in the dark when I looked out over the world for something better.
Mr. Wright was a revelation and an inspiration to me. Why, he was just as approachable as a boy. A handsome man, with the kindliest and most sympathetic face I had ever seen. I can shut my eyes and see that intelligent face, with those sympathetic eyes, into which the hopeless could look and find hope and courage.
He wanted me to write for his paper. I told him frankly that I lacked education and vocabulary, and could write only in a crude style. And he replied:
“Why, that is what the people want. The world is tired of rounded phrases and poetical lines and erudite sentences. What the people want is original thought, new ideas—a new and original way of looking at every-day events, without prejudice or superstition or cant. You can do this, for there is an originality about your ideas—an independent peephole, through which you observe the world, without fear or favor. All you want is practice. You do not ape or copy after any writer I ever heard of, and practice will polish your original style to a surprising extent. If your style was borrowed, practice would do you little good. It might add to your ability to ape and copy after others, but the style would never be your own.”
Something happened soon after this, and Mr. Wright went back to Philadelphia before I could send in my contributions. Then my old mother was taken very ill, and I had no time for literature. Mr. Wright kept in touch with the country paper, and when my contributions no longer appeared, he wrote me to know the reason why. I told him that I was nursing my dying mother, and was obliged to drop literature until all was over. He wrote me again and extended his sympathy, and what was of still more material benefit—a bank note. It came when poverty and sorrow were sweeping over me, and it gave me courage.
It was so pleasant to know that this big-hearted man was thinking of me, away down in the big city. He was the first educated man to find any merit in my feeble attempts at writing for publication. His appreciation came like rain to a famishing flower. It was something I had been hungering for through the miserable years when all the future looked like a narrow horizon, that dipped down into a coming storm of hopelessness.
I never saw Mr. Wright but that one time, and never heard directly from him again. I never had the opportunity to tell him how much good his kind words of appreciation had done for me. He died while I was living in Colorado, and my soul was filled with sorrow and regret. I had always hoped to meet him again and thank him for the good he had so unconsciously imparted to me. I knew that an inspiration had gone out of my life when he died, though he never dreamed of the great uplift he had given me.
I am writing these lines to show the reader how much good one man’s appreciative words can do for another. We all have a subtle force within ourselves for doing good or harm to our fellow men. The thought pebble we carelessly toss into the intellectual stream of our neighbor may start little waves to vibrating and extending into a circle around him, which will greatly influence his future life.
After Mr. Wright’s death there was a space of fifteen years in which no man could transmit an inspiration to my soul and give my mind a new impetus. Then, outside a little country church, I met for the first time the other man who touched a vibrating chord in my soul, and a new world of hope opened up, like the lifting of a dense fog often reveals the distant mountains.