During my connection with the Press I learned much from Andrew McKenzie, who succeeded William Muller as Sunday editor, and who never tired of pruning my "copy" with kind care. There also I met one of the finest men that it has ever been my pleasure to know, Hilary Bell, who, besides being the critic of the paper, was an artist and literateur of high degree, and so devoted to his work that the zeal with which he pursued his studies brought him to a much too early end. Bright, staunch, manly, Hilary Bell is no more, but his memory will live forever in my grateful heart. In the fall of 1901 the Sunday Herald published a story, "How To Be a Gentleman on Ten Thousand a Year." I happened to read it and, providing one has the other and more essential qualities, thought it no hard matter to keep from starvation on that amount. The story was written in a spirit of complaint, reciting how difficult it was to be a "somebody" in society on that figure. Down here on the Bowery and East Side we have gentlemen, though some may doubt it, and they manage to retain their claim to the title on very much less than ten thousand. The contrast was so wide that I could not refrain from writing about it and submitting it to the Herald.
Mr. Dinwiddie, the Sunday editor, sent me a letter asking me to call. I had called the story "How To Be a Gentleman on Three Dollars a Week." The editor thought my story a trifle exaggerated, and it took some time to convince him that the truth had not been stretched. But at last the story was printed, and I followed it up with other stories about my people.
In January, 1902, Mr. Hartley Davis, the editor of the Sunday News, invited me to become a steady contributor to that paper. The News had always been the paper of the Fourth Ward, and you can easily imagine what a stir it created among some of my old friends when they saw my name so frequently at the bottom of a story. In the "front rooms" of many humble homes down there I have seen some of my stories hang proudly, and framed, in the place of honor on the wall. And it has made me feel good. Not so much because of the self-satisfaction, although let me be frank and state that very often when I know and feel I have written a fairly good story, I cannot hide my pride in my work and glory in it, for it proves to me that all was not in vain—but because it shows that even these poor people whom you think so vile, so demoralized, are glad to recognize it with sincerity, when one from among them succeeds in climbing a few steps on the ladder of useful decency and manhood.
During my connection with the Sunday News I had a chat with Hartley Davis which was the starting point of this book. I had returned to the office from an assignment, and, after reporting to the editor, made a few comments on the scenes just left by me. We fell into a discussion on the slums, and Hartley Davis congratulated me on my escape from them. My origin was not known to my readers at the time. This point was accentuated by Davis.
"Kildare, if the readers of the Sunday News knew how you were developed from a seller of the paper on the streets to a writer for it, they would have greater faith in your stories of your people and in you. A chance was offered to you and you took advantage of it. When a man is a Bowery tough at thirty, unable to read, and at thirty-seven starts in to earn his living by writing, it is worth the telling."
I said: "It was not a chance, it was a miracle."
There was a difference of opinion. To settle the difference and to adopt the suggestion made, I wrote my story for the Sunday News and was surprised at the sympathetic response it awakened.
Below, you will find a copy of the epitome written by Hartley Davis at the publication of my story:
NEW YORK SUNDAY NEWS.
February 2, 1902.