This gave me the chance of repeating, more or less accurately, a paragraph which appeared in Punch some years ago, and which I always recite when that delightful periodical is slandered in my hearing. It ran something after this fashion:
"One of our esteemed contemporaries is very much worked up in its mind about Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, which it compares to that of the camel, which, when pursued, buries its head in the sand. We quite agree with our esteemed contemporary about Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, but we fear it is getting its metaphors mixed. Surely it is not thinking of the camel which, when pursued, buries its head in the sand, but of the ostrich which, when pursued, runs its eye through a needle."
It was a lucky hit. No one had heard it before, and our party broke up with Mr. Pulitzer in high good humor.
So the days passed. I saw a great deal of Mr. Pulitzer and went through many agonizing hours of cross-examination; but gradually matters came round to the point where we discussed the possibility of my becoming a member of his personal staff. He thought that there was some hope that, if he put me through a rigorous training, I might suit him, but before it could even be settled that such an attempt should be made many things would have to be cleared up.
In the first place, I would understand what extreme caution was necessary for him in making a selection. There was not only the question of whether I could make myself useful to him, and the question of whether I could be trusted in a relationship of such a confidential nature, there remained the very important question of whether I was a fit person to associate with the lady members of his family, who spent some portion of each year with him.
This matter was discussed very frankly, and was then shelved pending a reference to a number of people in England and America at whose homes I had been a guest, and where the household included ladies.
At the end of a week the yacht was sent to Marseilles to coal in preparation for a cruise, and I went to stay at an hotel near the villa. It was a change for the worse.
By the time the yacht returned I had had some opportunity of observing the routine of life at the villa. After breakfast Mr. Pulitzer went for a drive, accompanied by one, or occasionally by two, of the secretaries. During this drive he received a rough summary of the morning's news, the papers having been gone over and marked either the night before or while he was having his breakfast.
As he seldom let us know in advance which of us he would call upon for the first presentation of the news, and as he was liable to change his mind at the last minute when he had named somebody the previous night, we had all of us to go through the papers with great care, so that we might be prepared if we were called upon.
On returning from his drive Mr. Pulitzer would either sit in the library and dictate letters and cablegrams, or he would have the news gone over in detail, or, if the state of his health forbade the mental exertion involved in the intense concentration with which he absorbed what was read to him from the papers, he would go for a ride, accompanied by a groom and by one of the secretaries. When he went to Europe he usually sent over in advance some horses from his own stable, as he was very fond of riding and could not trust himself on a strange horse.