David Malcolm

by Nelson Lloyd

You will think that I was a dreamy, egotistical youth for whom not only the ways of home but the ways of the mass of his fellows were not quite good enough. Perhaps I was. But you must remember a boyhood passed in loneliness; long days when my feet followed the windings of the creek, but my eyes were turned to the distant mountains; the evenings when from the barn-bridge I watched the shadows fall and saw the valley peopled with mysterious shapes. I was ambitious, and I coddled myself with the belief that my ambition did not spring from selfishness, from what the Professor had called the yearning for something more, but from the desire for something better. I did not drag up the roots of my motives to light. Had I, the cynical philosopher must have found that they were nurtured in the same soil that nurtured the ambitions of Judge Bundy.

I had faith in the Professor and I wanted to find him. I could see the inconsistency of his practice and his preaching, but truth is truth no matter by whom uttered. I believed that he could help me, and I wrote to him in the care of Valerian Harassan. The writing of this letter was an evening's labor, for in it I had to tell him what had passed after that day when he had fled into the mountains, of the coming of Rufus Blight and the disappearance of Penelope out of my life; I had much to ask him of her and of himself, and then to lead on to my present quandary. The labor was without any reward. Weeks passed and he did not answer. I wrote to Valerian Harassan and was honored with a prompt reply—his friend Mr. Henderson had returned to San Francisco and he had forwarded my letter there. "But you had as well try to correspond with the will-o'-the-wisp," he wrote. "When last I talked with him, he spoke rather vaguely of going to China and making a trip afoot to Lhasa." Nevertheless, I wrote again, and it was a year later when both of my letters came back to me bearing the post-marks of many cities from coast to coast, to be opened at last by the dead-letter office.

The Professor was silent. Within a week of my graduation I found myself still in a quandary as to my course, and then it came about that it was set for me by the last man in the world whom at that moment I would have chosen for a pilot. This was Boller of '89.

Boller's father was the owner of a daily newspaper in a small inland city, and in the two years since he had left McGraw the son had risen to the chief editorship. His return to college that year was in the nature of a triumphal progress. He sat with the faculty in the morning chapel service, and Doctor Todd took occasion to refer to the presence of a distinguished alumnus who had made his mark in the profession of journalism. In two years Boller had matured to the wisdom and manner of fifty. He had abandoned the exaggerated clothes of his college days for careless, baggy black. His hair had grown long and was dishevelled by much combing with the fingers, and the mustache, once so carefully trimmed and curled, now drooped mournfully, and he had added a tiny goatee to his facial adornments. Drooping glasses on his nose, with a broad black ribbon suspended from them, gave him an appearance of intellectuality, so astonishing a transformation that it was hard for me to believe that this was the same Boller who had greeted me four years before on the college steps. The next morning after his reappearance Doctor Todd announced that our distinguished alumnus had been induced to speak informally to the students that evening on journalism and its appeal to young men. In the rôle of a very old man, Boller from the chapel rostrum descanted learnedly on what he termed the "greatest power for righteousness in modern times and the dynamic force through the operation of which the race is to attain its ideals." To my mind Boller's view of the power for righteousness troubled itself chiefly with the opposing political party, as was shown by the instance he cited where his own paper had exposed the corrupt Democratic ring in Pokono County and had put in its place a group of Republican patriots. Doctor Todd, however, said afterward that Boller had treated the subject in masterly fashion and that he was proud that McGraw had had its part in forming such a mind. While I had listened to Boller in all seriousness, the Professor's diatribe was too vividly in my memory for me to accept without reservation everything that our distinguished alumnus said. But he did bring to my mind the idea that here possibly was the opportunity which I sought, and long before he had finished my thoughts had wandered far from the chapel and I was picturing myself in an editorial chair and with a caustic pen attacking the devils of which poor man is possessed.

I met Boller in the hall afterward, and as he took my arm condescendingly and walked with me a little way I summoned up courage to invite him to my room and there to open my heart to him.

He lighted one of his own cigars after having declined that which I offered him, and this little evidence of his superior taste served to confirm my opinion of his importance. He crossed his legs carelessly, leaned back and watched a long spire of smoke rise ceilingward. "So you are thinking of journalism, eh, Malcolm?"

"You have set me thinking of it," I returned. "Somehow the law doesn't appeal to me any more. The truth is—" I hesitated, recalling how Boller's subtle ridicule had shaken the purpose so carefully nourished by my parents and Mr. Pound. Though his talk that night had been filled with high-flying phrases about ideals of citizenship and useful manhood, I still had lingering doubts of his entire sincerity, and I cast about for some way of expressing my thoughts without making myself ludicrous in his eyes.

"The truth is—" Boller repeated.

"That I want to take up work that means something more than bread and butter," I responded. "I don't want to be a big fish in a small pond."

"And you think that journalism offers a chance of becoming a whale in a big pond. It does, Malcolm, it does," said Boller. "Journalism is the greatest power in the country to-day. We used to call you the Reverend David. Well, if you still have any lingering desire to be a preacher, the paper is the place for you, not the pulpit. The editorial is the sermon of the future. If you would become a preacher, by all means take up journalism. If you have red blood in your veins you will be a journalist."