"Only ten thousand years," I replied.
"Fleetwood's Wednesday Evenings begin next week. If you want to remove your infamous towhead from its richly upholstered barrel for a minute, you 'd better come around," he suggested. "Fleetwood had his Wednesday Evenings on Friday last year because he thought it was more quaint—but I see he 's changed back."
"He told me if I came I should hear a lion roar," I said, trying to remember my talk with Fleetwood at The Holly Tree. At this Duggie lay back and shrieked aloud.
"That man will be found some day torn into small, neat shreds," he managed to say at last.
"Why?" I asked—for I knew he liked Fleetwood.
"Why, because I'm the lion," Duggie giggled.
VII
It must be several weeks since I 've written a word in my diary. To tell the truth, I spend so much time writing other things—things that are printed and sold—actually—at the bookstores—that somehow my own every-day affairs don't seem so important as they did. In a word—I 've been made an editor of the Advocate. It seems so wonderful to be an anything of anything with my name in print on the front page just above the editorials—the editorials that, as Duggie says sarcastically, have made the President and the University what they are. Mamma was delighted at my success, and so was Mildred—although she tried to be funny over my triolet, When Gladys Sings, in the last number, and wrote me that, unless Gladys were the name of a quadruped of some kind, amputation here and there would have improved her. Even papa was pleased, I think, although my first story made him very angry and he wrote me a terrible letter about it. I had simply described, as accurately as I could remember it, the time he went as "The Silver-Tongued Orator from Perugia" to make a political speech in the country and took Mildred and me with him. I told about the people at whose house we stayed, described the house and recorded our conversations at dinner and supper. That was really all there was to it. I considered it quite harmless. The Crimson in criticising it said: "The Jimsons—a humorous sketch by a new writer—is the only ray of sunlight in a number devoted almost exclusively to battle, murder, and sudden death;" a Boston paper reprinted it in full, and papa was perfectly furious. He wrote to me saying (among several pages of other things): "While admitting that your description of my friends is photographic and, in an inexpensive and altogether odious fashion, rather amusing, I take occasion to call your attention to the fact—it seems to have escaped you—that they are, after all, my friends. Furthermore (passing from the purely ethical to the sternly practical), it is among just these people that you will, in the not very distant future, be engaged in making (or trying to make) a living. Kindly snatch a moment or two from your literary pursuits and think this over in some of its more grim possibilities." He also rather superfluously informed me that I would "be older some day" than I am now. (This remark, by the way, seems to have a peculiar fascination for men who have passed the age of fifty.) I showed the letter to Berri, and when he had finished it he said thoughtfully: "A few communications like this, and the keen edge of one's humor would become a trifle dulled."
My election to the Advocate came about in the most unexpected way possible. It's queer how things happen. Berri was sitting in my room one afternoon apparently reading by the fire. Suddenly he looked up and exclaimed:
"Do you realize, Tommy, that failure is staring us in the face?"