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“There are too many writers and too few cooks.” The dean laughed at her outright. His superior glance placed her. “The trouble with you is that you are a Russian Jewess. You want the impossible.”
Sophie Sapinsky’s mouth quivered at the corners, and her teeth bit into the lower lip to still its trembling.
“How can you tell what’s possible in me before I had a chance?” she said.
“My dear child”—Dean Lawrence tried to be kind—“the magazine world is overcrowded with native-born writers who do not earn their salt. What chance is there for you, with your immigrant English? You could never get rid of your foreign idiom. Quite frankly, I think you are too old to begin.”
“I’m not so old like I look.” Sophie heard a voice that seemed to come from somewhere within her speak for her. “I’m only old from the crushed-in things that burn me up. It dies in me, my heart, if I don’t give out what’s in me.”
“My dear young woman”—the dean’s broad tolerance broke forth into another laugh—“you are only one of the many who think that they have something to say that the world is languishing to hear.” His easy facetiousness stung her into further vehemence.
“But I’m telling you I ain’t everybody.” With her fist she struck his desk, oblivious of what she was doing. “I’m smart from myself, not from books. I never had a chance when I was young, so I got to make my chance when I’m ‘too old.’ I feel I could yet be younger than youth if I could only catch on to the work I love.”
“Take my advice. Retain the position that assures you a living. Apply yourself earnestly to it, and you will secure a measure of satisfaction.”
The dean turned to the mahogany clock on his desk. Sophie Sapinsky was quick to take the hint. She had taken up too much of his time, but she could not give up without another effort.