“I can see you have something original. But I can’t decide just now. You’ll hear from me as soon as I have read it through.”
I could hardly walk the street for excitement. My life hung on this man’s answer. And it came two days later in a small envelope. He offered me two hundred dollars for my story.
I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a dream. And I rushed with the letter to his office. “You could have given me a hundred dollars, fifty, twenty-five, and it would have been to me a fortune. But two hundred—do you mean really to give that much to me?”
He chuckled to himself, and I rushed right on. “I thought New York was a den of thieves. The landlord robbing you with the rent, and the restaurants cheating the strength out of every bite of food you buy. And I thought the college higher-ups were only educated cowards with dish-water in their veins, scared to death of hungry people like me, scared to look at the face of suffering. Their logic and their reason—only how to use their book-learning brains to shut out their hearts—to make themselves deaf, dumb and blind to the cry of hunger and want knocking at their doors.”
“Just because you felt all that so deeply you were able to put fire in your words.”
A thousand windows of light burst open in me as I listened to him. I was like something choked for ages in the tight chains of ignorance and fear, breathing the first breath of free air. For the first time my eyes began to see, my ears began to hear, my heart began to understand the world’s wonder and the beauty.
A great pity welled up in my heart for the Alfred Notts and the John Blairs whom I had so mercilessly condemned. Poor little-educated ones! Why did I fear them and envy them and hate them so for nothing? They were only little children putting on a long wooden face, playing teacher to the world. And I was a little scared child afraid of teacher—afraid they were grown-ups with the power to hurt me and shut me out from the fun of life.
Why wasn’t I scared of Robert Reeves from the first minute? It was because he didn’t frighten people with his highness. He didn’t wear a wooden face of dignity. He was no reformer, no holy social worker—only a human being who loved people.
That one flash of understanding from Robert Reeves filled me with such enthusiasm for work that I shut myself off from the rest of the world and began turning out story after story.
Years passed. The only sign of success I became aware of was the increasing flood of mail that poured in on me. People who wanted to be writers asked me for literary help. People who imagined I was rolling in money sent me begging letters for aid. At the beginning I wanted to help them all. But I soon saw that I’d have to spend all my time answering the demands of foolish self-seekers who had nothing in common with me. And so I had to harden my heart against these time-wasting intruders.