He thinks that Dr. Stuffe was right when he advised him to go into society, and already he feels sure that he is deriving great benefit from it. But what he mistakes for a healthful stimulant is, in reality, the insidious poison against which the Reverend Stuffe has never a word of warning said; and, unless our young friend be strong enough to flee from it in time, he will find his feet straying from the rugged path which leads to true literary success, and which he has up to this moment been treading bravely and with ever-increasing self-confidence and knowledge.
“And so you’re really a literary man! How nice that must be! Do tell me what nom de plume you write under!” some lovely girl will say to him, and then he will answer meekly that he does not sign either his name or his nom de plume, because he is working on a daily paper—if he has a mind as strong as Daniel Webster’s he will say that he is a reporter—and then some of the light will fade out of the young girl’s deep-blue eyes, and she will say “Oh!” and perhaps ask him if he doesn’t think Mr. Janvier’s story about the dead Philadelphia cat the funniest thing that he’s seen in a long while. Then she will ask him compassionately why he does not write for the magazines like that delightful Mr. Inkhorn, who sometimes goes down on the Bowery with two detectives, and sits up as late as half-past eleven. Has he read Mr. Inkhorn’s story, “Little Willie: A Tale of Mush and Milk”? It’s perfectly delightful, and shows such a wonderful knowledge of New York!
At this point I would advise my young friend from Park Row to put cotton in his ears or turn the conversation into some other channel, because if the sweet young girl prattles on much longer he will find that her literary standards of good and bad are very different from those of his editor-in-chief, whom he has been trying so hard to please, and of the clever, hard-working and hard-thinking young men with whom he is associated in both work and play. If she can inspire him with a desire to please her, he will have cause to bitterly regret the day that he first sought her society in obedience to the suggestion of Dr. Stuffe; for to accomplish this he must put away the teachings of his editor-in-chief, who has learned four languages in order that he may understand his own, and whose later years have been devoted to the task of instilling in the minds of his subordinates a fitting reverence for the purity and splendor of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
It is precious little that the pure, refined young girl cares about good English, and she would be a rare one of her kind if she did not prefer it splattered with hybrid French because it “sounds better.” She has a far higher regard for the author who signs his name to “The Paper-hanger’s Bride” in the Century, or “The Dish-washer’s Farewell” in the Ladies’ Home Journal, than she has for the reporter who, by sheer force of humor, pathos, and imagination, has raised some trivial city happening to the dignity of a column “story” which becomes a three days’ talk along Park Row.
That there are women who habitually judge literary matter strictly on its merits, and without regard to the quality of the paper on which it is printed, I will not deny—I am even willing to admit that there are women who will lead trumps at whist—but I most solemnly affirm that the average well-educated, clever reading woman of to-day believes in her secret heart that a magazine story possesses a higher degree of merit than a newspaper sketch because it appears in a magazine, and that the “literary man” who has succeeded in selling enough short stories to the monthlies to enable him to republish them in book form has won for himself a more imposing niche in the temple of fame than should be accorded to the late Mr. J. A. MacGahan, who was nothing but a newspaper reporter to the time of his death.
A few cases of Swelled Head resulting from the flattery of women may be mentioned here for the benefit of my imaginary young friend from Park Row, to whom they should serve as so many awful examples of what may happen to one who deserts the narrow and rugged path of honest literary endeavor for the easy-going drawing-rooms in which “faking” and even literary and artistic theft are looked upon with complacency and tolerance.
About fifteen years ago sundry poems, essays, and short stories, bearing a signature which is almost forgotten now, began to attract the attention of the critical, and before long their author came to be looked upon as one of the most promising and talented young writers in the city. Unfortunately for himself, however, his very cleverness and its remarkable precocity proved his ultimate ruin. He was a very young man when he emerged from his native commonplace obscurity and crept, almost unaided, to the very edge of the great white fierce light in whose rays the most ordinary of folks become famous.
And, having reached the outer edge of this brilliant disk of light, he leisurely sate himself down to rest, firmly believing that he was in the very center of it, and that the silly flattery of underbred and half-educated women, and some ridiculous puffery at the hands of time-serving reviewers and paragraphers, were the greenest bays of Parnassus. He became thoroughly satisfied with himself and with his work; and the Swelled Head assumes no more virulent or insidious form than that. He did not become an unpleasant, egotistical nuisance, as many people similarly afflicted do. I cannot remember that he talked very much about himself or his work; he simply agreed with himself that he was the greatest writer of the age, and that he had already achieved fame and glory of the highest sort.
That was not more than a dozen years ago, and at that time his name was on everybody’s lips as the “coming man” of the period. Ah me! how many of these “coming” men and women have come and gone along the outer edge of the great white light within my short memory!
In the past six years I have not seen anything from his pen nor heard him spoken of a dozen times. I saw him the other night on Third Avenue, and if the light from a huge sibilant electric lamp had not shone upon him much more vividly than the great white light of fame ever did, I would never have known him. Seedy, abject, repulsive, he seemed fitted for no rôle in life other than that of an “awful example” to accompany one whose profession it is to go about delivering lectures on the evil results of indulgence in Swelled Head.