“After that I went to work, living alone in a room at Thirty-eighth Street and Tenth Avenue. One night, about 3 o’clock in the morning, I came across a man down by the river whose face was all covered with blood.
“‘What’s the matter?’ I asked him.
“‘I’m dying, kid, I’m dying!’ he told me.
“I took him home and fixed him up. It turned out that he was the leader of a notorious gang. I’ve never known a finer chap than he. I’ve found out in this life that if you scratch deep enough you’ll always find true worth.
“About a week after that night he came around and took me to a notorious saloon. He took me into the back room and introduced me to the bunch. Several of them have gone to the chair since, but they were good fellows.[12] I’ve gone into that saloon without a nickel in my pocket, and looking it. I’ve had one of the gang say to me: ‘Stony up against it, kid? Will a fiver help?’ and before I could know what happened the gang would have taken up a collection of $25 and given it to me.[13]
“My wife was living with her family at that time, but often she would come to bring me baskets with chicken and all sorts of delightful little delicacies. The neighborhood was a terrible one in those days, and I was afraid at first to have her come there. I told some of the boys about it. They told me never to worry again. They arranged that an unseen bodyguard should follow her from the street car and escort her to my room and back again when she was ready to leave.... She believed in me even then when it meant more to me than anything in the world. People don’t know it, but I am naturally a timid man. She gave me confidence in myself, and with it came the ability to succeed.”
The room at Thirty-eighth Street and Tenth Avenue was a studio, “dismal, rat-haunted,” where a job as a painter of theatrical scenery compelled him to spend a great many of his nights and days. In intervals of scene-painting he began The Broad Highway. “I met O. Henry several times in the offices of Ainslee’s Magazine. I think it was Will Irwin who introduced us. O. Henry was unusually taciturn for an American, and I—well, I am an Englishman. So though we saw each other frequently, never more than ‘How d’ ye do’ passed between us.
“The pleasantest recollections I have of those old days was the time I spent in dabbling in painting and theatricals at the old Astor Theatre. One day a down-and-out young man got past the doorkeeper and strolled on the stage. ‘I’ve got a fortune here in my pocket,’ he said. ‘We all have that,’ I replied.
“The young fellow said he had been a cub reporter in Chicago, but now he was hungry and looking for a job. Finally he got the attention of the producer at the theatre. He pulled out a manuscript and began reading. The producer at first paid no attention, but gradually became more and more interested. When the first act had been read the producer said, ‘All right, I’ll take it.’ The starving dramatist was Eugene Walter and the manuscript was that of ‘Paid in Full.’”[14]