These were poor Edward’s accomplishments.
He could do two card tricks, but anyone smart could see through them.
He could sing in an unresonant voice a few of the old sea-chanteys with which Jimmy used to inspire delighted applause.
He could make paper crabs. That was rather a cute notion. But not cute enough to be the life and soul of a party. The crabs would do as a side-line. This thought enlivened his wits a little.
He could write poetry. It was unhappy, offended poetry, but not always very bad. He himself recited it at night to himself and thought it good, but he was sure that nobody else in the world would understand it.
Edward had no capacity for being comfortable. He lived in a small room in a cheap hotel in San Francisco, and in that room there was no trace of Edward except Edward himself. The room was allowed to remain an undisguised hotel room. A defaced card of advertisements and hotel regulations was on the door, a green pottery spittoon on the floor, a gaudy but not clean cotton padded quilt on the bed. Even the dirty jokes which some predecessor had written on the wall were left, and on the dressing-table was the Gideon Society’s Bible, the flyleaf of which gave lists of texts to look up when business was bad or after making a successful deal.
In this heartless room Edward lived, with a telephone for his only companion. In this room that day he sat on the small stiff armless rocking-chair until he had made a resolve and then he spent thirty-five minutes at the telephone.
Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered.
There was quite a decided rise in the stock of Edward’s party after he had telephoned his confused instructions to his guests. Edward imagined all his guests smiling tolerantly at their own folly and his. They would hunt in the pigeon-holes of their bureaux and bring out secret typescript. “Such nonsense,” they would say to themselves, reading their work with avidity and pleasure. Each guest would innocently anticipate in his heart the awed silence that would fall on the party as the last words of his poem were read.